The Ontario Together Fund
An application for Ontario based businesses to receive funding during COVID-19
Parameters to receive this funding are:
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Be an Ontario based business (for at least 2 years before)
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Help the Ontario economy build infrastructure for goods and services
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Must focus on strengthening the health, safety and security of Ontarians
- Support homegrown technologies and innovation
Constraints:
- Two week timeline from assignment until launch
- Ensuring all accessibility and branding standards met
- Remote
- The funding program is public facing and must still run
- There was no time or funding budgeted for user testing
The problem space
The hosting ministry of this application, MEJCAT, had launched an application. The applicants they received were 80% from international businesses. These businesses were looking to gain traction in a new jurisdiction- Ontario. These results showcased a problem in content design.
This program area wasn’t able to sort through the application packages fast enough. The back end storage system for this program was a collective share point site with packages. These two main situations were causing a bottleneck for their turn around time. This infrastructure was a pain point for the application program team.
The Content Design Process:
To best design for the end user, a list of their needs were made. I completed this through creating “user stories”:
As a [person in a particular role]
I want to [perform an action or find something out]
So that [I can achieve my goal of…]
As a business owner in Ontario,
I want to receive funding for my business,
So that my business can help the province through the pandemic.
Virtual consultations
There were only 3 consultations done with the program area;
- A requirements gathering session
- A review of the iterated content for their input once redrafted by me
- A final demo of the application ahead of live launch
Next Steps
Once the content was approved, the front end developer was able to add it to the test environment created in drupal and ensure there were no bugs. The application was transitioned to this approved new system with a back end data focused storage through sharepoint in order to help the team process their applications received.