Background
An esteemed client of IDYeah is a Business Technologies company committed to helping clients, utilizing best of breed technologies to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Utilizing leading edge collaboration software, they deliver an integrated suite of world-class enterprise applications that are affordable, scalable and manageable.
Founded in 1995, the client has office locations in 6 countries, and boasts of more than 300 satisfied customers.In May 2009, they started building a custom purchases and payables application (codename: PAPA) for an automotive customer as an internal investment. The team wanted to capitalize on this initiative in terms of productizing the application for outside customers. Usability was a prime factor; they approached IDYeah in June 2009 to engage into usability services for PAPA.
Challenge
Too many workflows were envisioned and not completely validated for redundancies and inconsistencies.
Business Goals
- Increase client satisfaction
- Grow competitive advantage
- Productize PAPA
Project Objectives
- Bring out the conceptual message
- Reduce development time and cost
- Reduce maintenance cost
- Eliminate/minimize the need for user training
- Create a good visual appeal
Project Constraints/Challenges
- Overall Timeline under 4 weeks for Phase 1 – to go live with 4+ workflows
- Development activities were started before validating the user-centric requirements and gaps
Process
IDYeah Creations took an agile (iterative) approach to this engagement, which allowed for a timely delivery.
User & Task Analysis
User Profiling and Task Analysis was performed and the following classification was established:
A separate use-case based document was generated that led to careful elimination of redundant workflows and other inconsistencies – contributing to the overall reduction in development time and costs, and of course leading to better usability of the Application.
Expert Evaluation
A competitive analysis was done with reference applications and application modules in standard ERP systems, referencing with Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics.
User Interface Design
Few Highlights
- Rich, appealing, light weight interface
- Easy and Limited Navigation
- Quick access to search and help
- All relevant functionalities accessible from all pages
- Useful shortcuts
- Template-based design
Benefits
The immediate benefits reaped by the client were:
- Faster release of PAPA
- Inexpensive production of all workflows because of a template-based output
- Documented guidelines and UI specifications
Long term sustainable benefits:
- Marketability
- Lower maintenance
- Quality of Sales Pitch
- User adoption and delight
- Strong client retention
- Profitability
- Brand Positioning
Vishal Mehta is a usability professional who loves to play chess and has a strong eye for details. He’s also the CEO of IDYeah Creations, a UX practice in Pune, India. Vishal is also a guest blogger on UXBooth, Technorati, BlogCritics, and SAP Community Network.
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