Research
Firstly, I performed secondary research on common access rights models to determine which method fit the project scope. I then launched an internal survey to understand the tasks and needs of each team within the Admin Panel menu.
Ideation: Wire Flows
As the primary users, Staff Admins should be able to perform these 4 essential task flows:
Find New and Current Employee
Assign a Role to an Employee
Update or Revoke Role Access Rights
View Employee Role Access History
Testing
I turned the screens into an interactive mockup, allowing participants to perform tasks to be tested to evaluate the usability and gain more insights.
Although the test went well (96% score), due to the small samples size of 3 participants, I focused on analyzing participant quotes to identify areas of improvement.
Design Decision: Gating Sensitive Functions
Instead of gating admin feature pages, limit access to 6 key sensitive admin functions. This also maintains familiarity while efficiently resolving the issue at hand.
Design Decision: Table Side Drawer
Utilizing the table side drawer to assign role access simplified the steps, was less intrusive than a modal, and kept the scope reasonable for engineers.