"Product design is the field that uses various processes to develop physical solutions to specific needs. Products may be mass produced, custom-made, or customized." (from Nathan Shedroff)

Note: traditionally product design is considered a sub discipline of industrial design; the products I describe in this specification sheet largely utilize information visualization and information design to help display data and information in easier to understand ways.

a) Unusable tools: During a records and information management project, a client was often given an unwieldy 130 page, 687K reference book as a ‘tool’ and asked to use it to evaluate their information assets and files. Clients and our staff both found the reference book cumbersome to use;

b) Lack of accurate, easy to understand products: For project management staff would track progress of a project using Microsoft Project software, but our clients often had no access to Project or to the information within it. Additionally, Project had no way of adequately displaying information about delays in the project which was often crucial to the project’s timeline;

c) Lack of documentation: In some cases, new staff had no formal documentation as reference material on how to create the information management products needed by clients.

I refined existing tools and created new easy to understand tools on my own time, by my own initiative to address these problems

• To address problem a ('unusable tools'), I created a smaller, easy to use and understand checklist sent to clients
• To address problem b ('lack of accurate, easy to understand products'), I extracted information from the Microsoft Project file into a simple chart in Word accessible to everyone. This chart visually displayed the project’s progress, specific milestones, and the overall process. It also provides more room for commentary by staff or clients
• To address problem c ('lack of documentation'), I created new documents, including a guide and accompanying process flow charts which document ed the processes, procedures and best practices in creating our products. These could be used by staff and clients to aid in their comprehension of how we create and use our products. Additionally, various new internal office documents were created to track weekly project progress for management, invoice sheets to aid in billing, and standardized emails to send to clients during a project

Final deliverable: Various Province of Ontario internal documentation, including:

• a) Common Administrative Records Checklist
• b) Weekly Project Status Sheet
• c) 'How to build a File Directory Structure' guide, Records Schedule Process Flow, internal office documents (weekly project progress tracking, invoice sheets, standardized emails)