Several elements of CX theory sometime struggle to achieve practical results. That’s made it all the more pleasing recently for us to take ‘UX’ design theory into implementation, improving process efficiency by 10% and staff satisfaction with their system by many times. This story outlines the journey from UX theory to design principles to staff needs to system requirements.

Several elements of CX theory sometime struggle to achieve practical results. That’s made it all the more pleasing recently for us to take ‘UX’ design theory into implementation, improving process efficiency by 10% and staff satisfaction with their system by many times. This story outlines the journey from UX theory to design principles to staff needs to system requirements.

Starting point…

As designers we started this journey with a set of principles, specifically a set usability design principles. The objective of these principles is to provide direction on the design for usability improvements of the CIMS application and to guide designers, developers towards detailed design choices in line with the project aims. We had a number of considerations, such as the changing landscape of standards in the area of web application development, the way technology affects us in our lives and how quickly we can come to terms with how we operate technology, and some good old fashioned design principles that are still relevant.

However, the best design for a piece of technology is one we don't see at work at all....

Our Design Principles

[Unity] refers to a sense that everything in a piece of work belongs there, and makes a whole piece. It is achieved by the use of balance, repetition and/or design harmony, i.e. Consistent Global Navigation, Colour Scheme, Placement, the grouping of navigation items, consistency across the application.

emphasis (dominance or focal point): Emphasis refers to areas of interest that guides the eye into and out of the image through the use of sequence of various levels of focal points, primary focal point, secondary, tertiary, etc. i.e. Menu hierarchy, Form designs, List of Values, Use semantic markup to provide some emphasis, even without any styles. Change the size of fonts or images to emphasize or de-emphasize them in the design.

Contrast is the occurrence of differing elements, such as colour, value, size, etc. It creates interest and pulls the attention toward the focal point. i.e. The placement and visual design of alerts, to-dos and other action items

variety (alternation), The use of dissimilar elements, which creates interest and uniqueness. Variety like a painting or some reflective wood panels added on a plain wall may be used to reduce monotony. i.e. Changing HOMEPAGE, and LOGIN page design, ease of extending the visual design to new functional areas

balance can be either symmetrical, asymmetrical or radial. Balance also refers to a sense that dominant focal points don't give a feeling of being pulled too much to any specific part of the artwork. Balance can be achieved by the location of objects, volume or sizes of objects, and by balancing lighter colours with darker colours, or bold colours with light neutral colours. i.e. Colour scheme, Page layout, Report design

What the ‘users’ told us. You...

  told us about your day, and how the system fits in to it,

  told us about how we should introduce the changes and how training might best work,

  told us about the most important things you needed to find in the system, and quickly!

  designed a new way to view clients in the system,

  prioritised your needs & the benefits.

What we did with it

 On your behalf we started to design a system that would better suit the flow of you day

 We passed on your messages around introducing changes, and designed functionality that is more intuitive.

We thought about how you could get off to a good start when using the system

 We thought (a lot) about clients and how to incorporate them in to the system in a better ways

 We wrote everything down you said, and prioritised it, considering all the practicalities

Final system screen shots and iPad shots are confidential of course, but the real key here is that the system design was completely ‘outside-in’ from both customer and user/staff perspectives, and the results are not just a good looking system, but one that is efficient, easy to use and fast for customers.