Background

Early 2007 was when this Global Leader in Technical Support and BPO Operations Company envisioned a fully integrated Tech-Support Portal. The underlying value proposition to their clients was to have a channel to provide inexpensive support to the end-customers, by cutting down on the expensive mode of support – voice, email and chat. January 2009 was when a Beta version of the Tech-Support Portal – “NextGen” was made ready and tested. The success of this initiative would mean stronger client retention and a significant increase in the bottom line.

The Company approached IDYeah Creations in March 2009 with the high-level need of giving a user-centric face-lift to NextGen.

Challenge

The main challenge was to make the portal completely intuitive and user-friendly, as the target end-users spectrum was very wide, ranging from a non-working house-wife to a busy businessman to a technologist. Furthermore, the Company wanted to “white label” their portal – giving a customizable and a personalized interface respective to the client’s brand identity and strategy.

Business Goals

• Increase client satisfaction
• Grow competitive advantage
• Increase bottom line

Project Objectives

• Bring out the conceptual message
• Reduce development time and cost
• Reduce maintenance cost
• Eliminate over-design
• Create a show-case of underlying tools and technologies
• Create a good visual appeal

Project Constraints

• Overall Timeline of 10 days
• White labelling should be possible after-delivery in under 1 day’s effort

Process

IDYeah Creations could not take a completely scientific approach, with the established project constraints. A blend of scientific, emotional, and instinct based approach was taken.

User & Task Analysis

User Profiling and Task Analysis served as a foundation for validation of use case workflows. The range of user needs for access to information required a detailed “user to task” analysis exercise to determine what online functionality was most valuable to each identified user type. With the time constraints, we put 90% emphasis on one end of the user spectrum – that was converging towards computer-illiterate class of users. Once we established a usage pattern after conducting surveys and interviews with a sample of 40 users, we could easily extrapolate the pattern to cover other extreme of the spectrum.

Post-review of the features toolset of the portal, we established a master workflow that was aligned with the company’s vision of guiding the user through inexpensive, quick and easy support to the clients’ customers, while discouraging him/her to use phone as a channel.

Expert Evaluation

The then existing user-interface post-evaluation highlighted many areas of improvements – few of which were:

• Complicated structure of information
• Excessive navigation and lengthy workflows
• Confusing terminology
• Different channels of getting support (self-help, chat, email, etc.) are not obvious
• Difficult interface for white labelling
• Visual appeal missing

Above evaluation was backed up by findings that surfaced by referencing Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics.

Usability Heuristic	Findings
Visibility of system status	When Tools are downloaded, there’s appropriate status bar
Match between system and the real world	Language/terminology is misleading Symbols and graphics do not connect effectively with the perceived meaning
User control and freedom	Cumbersome navigation prevents users to easily switch between workflows
Consistency and standards	N/A
Error prevention	N/A
Recognition rather than recall	The tabs and pages need to be explained to a certain class of users No useful shortcuts found
Flexibility and efficiency of use	Multiple screens for any task, including login No helper mechanisms to facilitate efficient use
Aesthetic and minimalist design	4 Tabs in Top navigation are not required Banner is generic and does not provide any functional use Bottom-right of screen area covers functional use, but completely side-lined
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors	N/A
Help and documentation	Much needed and missing

User Interface Design

IDYeah started working with a premise of having a singular page structure – one that is self-explanatory (even for a novice) and void of navigational steps. We toyed with an idea of having something similar to a real-world object that everyone identifies with and associates with as something that’s an information box – like a TV screen. This concept when sketched and shared with Sutherland team instantly created an excitement about the simplicity that was visualized. We had many more areas to cover, like adding conceptual messaging, allowing a customizable look, and covering all the functional aspects on a single screen.

Few Highlights

• Main focus (getting problems resolved) is on-the-face with a “search” interface
• “Conceptual messaging” is achieved by relevant graphics onto few tentacles, which echo what users think and also serves a functional purpose. We suggested to highlight the common problems of the month and link them to Knowledge base articles
• Login mechanism is inline
• All features are accessible and used within the TV screen interface
• Bottom part of the screen is reserved for some contextual elements that are specific to the client
• White labelling is made possible with an effort of approximately 4 hours
• Modern visual appeal

Benefits

The immediate benefits reaped by the Company were:

• Faster Release of NextGen
• Contextual Live Demonstrations to prospects due to easy white labelling

Long-term sustainable benefits:

• Marketability of NextGen
• Lower maintenance cost
• Quality of Sales Pitch
• Easy Showcase of Tools and Technologies
• User adoption and delight
• Strong client retention
• Profitability
• Brand Positioning

Summary

Usability increases customer satisfaction and productivity, leads to customer trust and loyalty, and inevitably results in tangible cost savings and profitability. Because user-interface development is part of a product’s development cost anyway, it pays to do it right. Most people view usability costs as added effort and expense, but the reverse is more commonly true.

The benefits of usability engineering can be achieved throughout the life of a product. Efficient methods and techniques can result in a faster release date allowing companies to unveil their products to the market prior to a competitor’s. A user-centred product can garner positive media reviews leading to increased sales. An effective, user-friendly user interface can increase customer ease of learning, ease of use, job satisfaction, and trust in the product.

Quotes

“Because the first 10% of the design process, when the key system-design decisions are made, can determine 90% of a product’s cost and performance, usability techniques help keep the product aligned with company goals.” (Smith & Reinersten)

“Incorporating ease of use into your products actually saves money. Reports have shown it is far more economical to consider user needs in the early stages of design, than it is to solve them later.” (IBM, 2001)

Related posts:

1. Case Study: Faster Time to Market with Rapid Development
2. Case Study: Reaching Wider Audience with Enhanced Visibility
3. Add More White Space
4. Principles of User Interface Design
5. Tolerance Principle in User Interfaces

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Tagged as: usability, user interface design, web portal, white labeling