My NCARB is the home of NCARB core products, where all of our internal and external users maintain licensing credentialing data for US Architects. It's the tool NCARB uses to serve its mission every day. Upgrading our core products is essential for NCARB to provide the highest quality of services.
My NCARB has been built over the course of a decade, during which product design and engineering standards have drastically changed. The reality of 10 + years of technological shifts means the original system will soon become obsolete. We set out to align the user experience with NCARB's brand standard while rebuilding on the backend, establishing brand consistency, flexibility, and scalability as we iterate into the future. The organization's number one priority in 2021-22 was to migrate roughly 14,000 active exam-eligible candidates to a new test vendor, bringing the scheduling feature in-house. I saw an opportunity to link these two efforts and place redesigning and re-engineering as a high-priority initiative, giving us the much-needed resources and momentum to move the project forward.
My NCARB Redesign + Re-engineering is an entire backend and frontend overhaul to upgrade our core products—redesign the user experience and interface, and rebuild the system with the latest technologies. I guide the team to look at the product holistically. The UX team looks at every user type, running discovery sessions to understand what is working well and where we may enhance the experience along the way. We decided the best approach was first to build a new design system, which we would use to spin up prototypes and ship features with minimal effort. The UX team designed components and set the rules, and engineers translated them into a Storybook React component library.
I led a cross-functional team that includes all NCARB directorates and external users. We use UX research and design best practices to ensure the product meets the needs of every user type. The product team collaborates with NCARB subject matter experts on programmatic rules and business processes, customer service representatives to understand their daily needs, and users at every step of the customer journey. Our strategy is to simultaneously upgrade the product one section at a time and give both our internal and external users an enhanced experience. We organize and prioritize features based on their impact on the user and the effort to engineer and deliver in a timely fashion.
My NCARB Redesign + Re-engineering is a forward-thinking approach to product design and development, moving off outdated technology, enhancing our users' experiences, and ensuring a high-quality product in the future. After fully transitioning off the original system, the Core Products team will maintain the research, design, and engineering cycle to provide continuous integration and delivery of NCARB services. A comprehensive, structured design system combined with thorough engineering documentation will make onboarding new talent easier, so they can confidently build a product that meets the NCARB standard of service. The work we are doing today is setting us up to create a better system faster and give all users within our community the best product experiences.