While working as associative UI/UX designer for a reputed tech company I got assigned in a project to make one of their proud product better. This is a employee management platform combining all the modules essential for a corporate such as HR module, sales, pre sales module, Marketing , Asset management etc. It's basically an ERP. I was a single designer working exclusively on this product to make it better. I was thrilled.
Well, Initially going through the product, I was amazed by the sheer size and the potential of the product. After the initial discussion with my manager we land upon the famous divide and conquer method. Focus on a single module and slowly progress to the next.
I started with the smallest module, a plan to conquer .
Understand all the terms and definitions
Map all the internal processes and functions
Find out all the frustrations using user interviews (Here my users are all the employees in the pre-sales), Heuristic evaluation.
Compare the findings with existing well known competitors.
Come up with possible solutions.
As always my first stone and throne in the path was - TIME. Pre sales people are one of the busiest people in the office. So connecting with them for understanding the flow and the process took a considerable time. But they were willing to help and also I was provided with skill and resourceful people on time.
Understanding the process in its depth was another problem because it's not an easy unidimensional work flow. Its branches out to different modules with various process on each steps. Fortunately with the help of the resourceful people it is sorted.
After deep dive into the processes and back and forth communication and interviews with users issues stated to unfolds. Heuristic evaluation and competitor analyses also helped to understand the issues in depth.
The product was initially designed and developed on the early stage of company. So at that time user base was small and internal processes where much simpler. Meanwhile the company was growing. So some modules where added, new process where introduced on the older frame work much like an expansion project. So like a renovation of an old building some parts are new but doesn't site quite well with the basic structure.
After math of all that expansions Leeds to a - not so user friendly, but some time frustrating navigation system.
Processes such as mails, calls, repots and status updates are manually entered and updated throughout the system. Being a bigger model means lots of manual work.
How to find required information from a complex system faster? -A good ,faster and efficient filter system. The product have a functioning filter system. But Now way to pine the required filter , or no option to save a frequently used filters. And there are filters for each sub category of data . So each time you want to find same data you have to select multiple filters repeatedly.
May be you can get away with a poor filter system if you have a powerful and efficient search function. But that was not the case . The search functionality is very limited and most of the time you can only search a particular category of data but even there are no specifiers to show what category you can search.
There are no customization what so ever . You will have the data which admin think you need.
Like search and filter function a good dashboard can be an easy way for effortless navigation towards the required information. But the existing dashboard is mostly neglected by the users because of the lack of visualization of the data and the un availability of required data.
There are no help and documentation function. If implemented correctly this function can be a huge time saver.
There are error messages but it doesn't tell you what went wrong or how to get it solved. Its gust tells you something is wrong.
As always my first stone and throne in the path was - TIME. Pre sales people are one of the busiest people in the office. So connecting with them for understanding the flow and the process took a considerable time. But they were willing to help and also I was provided with skill and resourceful people on time.
Understanding the process in its depth was another problem because it's not an easy unidimensional work flow. Its branches out to different modules with various process on each steps. Fortunately with the help of the resourceful people it is sorted.
The major and frequent issues directly pointed towards a better navigation system. The required solution was pointing towards re-structuring the product with better navigational system but with the product of such a huge scale it’s painstakingly long processes and require much more resource.
Make the search function better , efficient and powerful.- But without the proper basic structure that its is difficult, so?
Provide a better filter system- That also very difficult from developer point of view- Ok fine
Provide a save filter option so repeated filter usage won't be required - Can be done
Provide a menu which consist of all the required modules and sub categories so, Required information is two click away.- Can be done
A good dash board with all the required data visualized. So using the dash board for better navigational system (Bento box navigation system) can solve most of over problems.
Its provide visualized version of required data- Direct understanding of the data.
You can directly move to the required detailed page by clicking on the respective fields on the chart.