Midpoint Review - IA Feedback - Accredited Representative Facing, Accredited Representative Portal, Form 21-22 approval denial

[erinrwhite]

Next Steps for the VFS team

• [ ] Assign this ticket to the team member(s) responsible for addressing feedback provided by Platform.
• [ ] Comment on this ticket:
  • If the Platform reviewer has any Thoughts/Questions that require responses.
  • When Must feedback has been incorporated. As appropriate, link to any other GitHub issues or PRs related to this feedback.
  • When Should/Consider feedback has been incorporated, or if any feedback will not be addressed. As appropriate, link to any other GitHub issues or PRs related to this feedback.
• [ ] Questions? For the most timely response, comment on Slack in your team channel tagging @platform-governance-team-members.
• [ ] Close the ticket when all feedback has been addressed.

Thoughts/questions

• Thank you for bringing this through Collab Cycle! This is quite a large product and doesn't fall neatly within the bounds of other products we see in the Collab Cycle. I appreciate your willingness to use this process to align your work with the rest of VA.gov.

Feedback

Practice areas will document their feedback on the VFS-provided artifacts following the Must, Should, and Consider Framework. Platform Governance reviewers may also provide additional notes that don’t comment on the artifacts themselves but are important for implementation (eg. engineering/coding notes).

Must

• [ ] If hosting at VA.gov/XYZ, follow up with OCTO IA lead Y'all mentioned this product might have its own subdomain, or it might live under www.va.gov. If you pursue the latter option please reach out to Mikki Northuis, OCTO lead for IA, to ensure that the URLs for the product can be set up in a way that aligns with our other products living under the modernized experience at VA.gov.

• [x] Use breadcrumbs: this standard navigational component will help users orient themselves within the product and will be useful on both the static pages and within the POA application.

• [x] Pull "decline" workflow out of modals Because it's asking a couple of follow-up questions, the "decline" workflow should occur within a page in the application rather than a modal. This allows VSO's to be absolutely sure about the data they are submitting, and avoids unexpected accessibility and keyboard navigation interactions that a modal might present.

Should

• [x] POA screen: adjust content hierarchy for top tasks and clarify which view users are on: @briandeconinck enunciated this better than I, but the overall current design makes it unclear which tasks the users might be wanting to perform. Outlining 2-3 top tasks will help clarify the information flow, heading hierarchy, and order of elements for the page. Based on what the team shared, the primary views here are Pending requests, Approved requests, and Denied requests. That differentiation should be obvious immediately based on page headers, rather than relying on the current highlighted tab as an indicator. I suggest you...

  • Escalate the tabs to be at the top of the page content (perhaps just below the h1)
  • Add an obvious header stating what view is being displayed (i.e. Pending requests - and, depending on how your app is structured, the h1 might update dynamically to display this text)
  • Add filter, sort and results display below that.

• [x] POA screen: have filter, sort and display options adjacent or closer to each other This interface allows folks to have complete control over what data they're reviewing. Presenting these controls in a unified interface places all the controls close to each other, keyboard accessible, and easily reference-able. The sort dropdowns should appear on the page rather than in a modal, and the "results per page" control would ideally also be nearby.

• [x] Move unique content out of user navigation menu The user menu in the header currently lists the user's OGC number and organizations they are affiliated with, along with a link to contact someone if the information's incorrect. This info doesn't appear to be shared anywhere else in the product. This presents some accessibility and usability issues. Ideally information like this would be stored in the body of a page, rather than in the menu structure.

  Screenshot

  

• [x] Show "On this page" component in primary column (desktop - informational pages): We are steering teams away from using sidebars in general, and encouraging them to place the "On this page" component in the primary content column below the h1 and above the body text. The mobile view does this already.

Consider

• [ ] Use URL parameters to store display preferences: Since you are working with power users who will very likely bookmark or otherwise keep this page open in a tab, storing some of the search elements in the URL parameters would help folks keep their interface just the way they like it (# of results, sorts, filters). That said, be sure to follow guidance for parameters in URLs and not reference any PII in URL parameters.

Governance team actions

• [x] Format feedback as individual tasks (check boxes)
• [x] Assign this ticket to the VFS team member that opened the Slack request
• [x] Add the VFS team product label
• [x] Add the VFS team the feature label (if applicable)
• [x] Add the touchpoint labels
• [x] Add the practice area labels
• [x] Add the Collaboration Cycle initiative milestone

[mtri]

✔️ Breadcrumbs have been added. ✔️ Modal now adds a status alert to the POA detail which is focussed after submitting. This is similar to Find a Representative's report outdated information UX which cleared review. Similarly, now there is only one form interaction in the modal rather than an entire form flow. ✔️ Placement of tabs, headings, search, filter, and sort elements have been adjusted for better hierarchy and indication of what is viewed is pulled into the header above the list ✔️ Header navigation dropdown has been simplified. This information will now show on the dashboard contact information after sign in. ✔️ On this page compnoent has been moved to conventional position. ✔️ URL parameters will be used to store search queries (excluding PII)

If hosting at VA.gov/XYZ, follow up with OCTO IA lead Y'all mentioned this product might have its own subdomain, or it might live under www.va.gov. If you pursue the latter option please reach out to Mikki Northuis, OCTO lead for IA, to ensure that the URLs for the product can be set up in a way that aligns with our other products living under the modernized experience at VA.gov.

The working plan is to use a subdomaIn: http://representative.va.gov/