KeyedIn Solutions
KeyedIn Solutions produce complex portfolio project management software but sales were beginning to take a hit.
Problem
KeyedIn’s software was very powerful but had layers of legacy design and functionality that had been added over time. This resulted in a confusing set of UI styles, functionality, and user actions.
A design review was needed to help deliver a much more progressive product that would enable the business to grow its customer base.
Discovery
I began by performing a heuristic review to better understand the challenge.
I then ran a series of group stakeholder sessions with the pre-sales and customer service teams to gather feedback on their knowledge of client needs, desires, and pain points. This was crucial as I didn’t have any direct access to any end clients. In addition to discovering user issues, it helped me understand some of the business problems that were stopping the software from being sold to new customers.
Thematic analysis of their comments and observations was then conducted. This enabled me to see any patterns emerge across all of the groups.
Both the heuristic review and the thematic analysis from the interviews were then discussed with the CPO to isolate the main areas of concern to focus on.
Ideation
I began to sketch and formulate potential designs. As part of this process, it was important to address the inconsistencies in patterns and user actions, simplifying the functionality where needed.
There were areas of bloat that caused tasks to take far longer than necessary and others that just didn’t deliver the information required. This was a crucial part of the work and something that was described as a ‘game-changing factor’ in the stakeholder sessions.
Once I had some solid concepts, I generated prototypes to test. Due to restrictions mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to test with KeyedIn customers but regular sessions were held with the BAs and the CPO. This was then extended to the wider team to ensure everyone was involved, invested, and could contribute with their own thoughts.
Once a consensus was reached on the new work, I recorded the prototypes. This enabled members of the KeyedIn team to ‘showcase’ the new style and functionality to key customers. The overwhelming response was positive and generated excited anticipation.
Conclusion
Due to the short contract duration, it was never going to be possible to tackle every area of the software.
It is a very complex and multi-faceted system and will be an ongoing process of improvement. Because of this, I developed a UI design system to act as a guiding principle for the KeyedIn team to reference for future updates and development.
Alongside this, a series of recorded prototypes were created to illustrate key interactions and functionality to ensure the consistency of the application.