PRODUCT DESIGN
Evergent
Redesign
JUNE-AUGUST 2018
In the summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to intern as a Product Designer at Evergent Technologies, Inc., a software company in Sunnyvale, CA.
The internship consisted of traveling to work with Evergent’s team in Hyderabad, India for one month where Pooja Nitturkar, my co-worker, and I redesigned some of Evergent's most demanded interfaces.
OVERVIEW
The objective of the internship was to redesign some of Evergent’s most prominent modules. The majority of the internship was dedicated to user research and user testing in order to create the best experience for Evergent’s core users.
Timeline
Work
I took the lead on redesigning two of Evergent's most essential modules,
Account Management and New Business Unit. The redesigns are tailored to
the core users' workflows as well as improved readability and visual hierarchy.
Account Management
Account Management is Evergent's most prominent module. It allows its users to search, view, and edit the customer's information.
New Business Unit
New Business Unit is an internal-use only module used to create a new business account within the software.
Collaboration
I had the pleasure of working with Pooja Nitturkar, Evergent's other Product Design Intern. While Pooja also took lead on redesigning other modules, we worked together on research, user testing, and the overall look and feel of the redesigned interface.
RESEARCH
Arriving in Evergent's office in Hyderabad, India we were introduced to the software's core users and gained a deeper understanding of the software's most frequent use cases. Then we began our quantitative and qualitative research.
Evergent's Core Users
Business Analysts (BAs)
Business Analysts are the main point of contact for Evergent's clients. Their tasks ranges from creating the client's account to addressing their daily requests.
Quality Assurance (QAs)
Quality Assurance associates addresses all of Evergent's clients API and CRM related inquiries. Their task ranges from providing the clients with software guidance to creating their coupons and promotions.
Customer Service Representatives (CSRs)
Evergent's clients have Customer Service Representatives to handle their customers' inquiries. These representatives use Evergent's software to access and edit their customers' information.
Primary Use Cases
Diagram showing the primary use cases of Account Management and New Business Unit by Evergent's core users.
Research Goals
-
Create user personas:
Learn as much as possible about the users to really know who we are designing for.
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Capture workflows:
Understand how the users work to tailor the most efficient workflow for them.
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Identify user pain points:
Find out everything that is in their way of receiving a great user experience.
Research Methods
Quantitative Research
To compile the most data in the shortest amount of time, we created online surveys for all Business Analysts and Quality Assurance associates in the office as well as Customer Service Representatives from streaming services.
Qualitative Resarch
We set up user interview sessions with Business Analysts and Quality Assurance associates as well as monitor them through their workflows. For Customer Service Representatives, we held video call sessions where they would share their screen and walk us through their tasks.
User Personas
The data we've gathered from our research allowed us to create potent user personas.
Selected example of a Business Analyst persona that we've created.
Workflows
We shadow our core users to map their workflows. By having a constant variable as our core users' most common tasks, we were able to see the similarities, differences, as well as what slows down their productivity.
User Pain Points
One of the challenges in researching user pain points were from how the users have already grown accustomed to the software. In order to optain a better answer than "the interface looks old" we had to come up with research questions that were very specific to their workflow on the software.
RESEARCH OUTCOMES
Collation of the results we've obtained from our user experience research on
Account Management, New Business Unit and the software itself.
General Issues
Look and Feel
The overall look and feel can be more user friendly and approachable.
Visual Hierarchy
The order and readability of content can be improved for faster browsing.
Outdated Interface
The interface does not harbor for the changes and newly added functions.
Disregarded Workflow
The design of the modules do not precisely accommodate for how its users work or for the most common tasks.
Things to Consider For Redesign
Account Management
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Account Management is a module where users opt in and out quickly, unless they have to troubleshoot or edit the customer's information.
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Most of the time, each user will look for the same fields of information since a lot of their tasks are repeated tasks. However, these fields vary between different users.
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The majority of users uses an external note pad application when browsing Account Management. The users copy customer's information on to the note pad so that they can refer to it while working in a different module or software.
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A customer account may be edited by different users, therefore it is important to see the history, especially the last modifications that were made.
New Business Unit
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New Business Unit is only used by Evergent's Business Analysts which already has grown accustomed to the interface, therefore they do not have much to complain about the interface's design.
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There are over 90 fields to fill out and these fields were added over the years without any order.
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The sections in the module are outdated from the new fields that were added.
REDESIGN
In our redesign process we started by creating lo-fi prototypes and iterating them until we felt it was worthy of a user test. After our first user testing session, we made modifications accordingly to the feedback we've received and what we think is best for our users. The second user testing session gave the green light for us to start making pixel perfect prototypes to present to Evergent's executive team in Sunnyvale, CA.
Account Management
After our research, we decided to restructure Account Management to stay true to its existence: For viewing, editing, and troubleshooting the customer's account.
The redesign aims to improve the users' experience by better accommodating for their workflows, increasing readability, and simplifying the overall interface.
Current version of Account Management.
Here's What's New
Everything
Who?
Know at a glance.
Last Modification
This happened.
Custom
Your new go-to tab.
Note Pad
Stop using your own!
Simplified Categories
Browse faster.
New UI
User-driven.
New UI design for Account Management.
Reorganization
Account,
Billing,
& Service
By studying our core users' use cases, we found that their browsing experience can be simplified to three categories: Account, Billing, and Service.
Reorganizing fields of information were one of the main drivers for the redesign. We were able to validate the rearrangements through user-testing sessions, where we ask users to find specific fields of information and observe how well they were able to
work outside the comfort of their memory.
Animation showing the reorganization of information in Account Management.
For Our Core Users
Workflow Accommodation
Who?
Presented insignificantly in the original design, Customer Name and Account Status now stand out on top. The Account Status is also the first thing our core users look at when troubleshooting a customer's account.
Red highlight shows how Customer Name and Account Status is originally presented.
New design helps users identify and troubleshoot the customer's account faster.
Custom
The Custom's tab is created in response to how each users will have a different combination of fields that they would look for repeatedly. The tab enables our
users to freely group their choice of fields together and prevents them from having
to frequently pan their eyes across the screen.
Users can choose to Show or Hide their Custom's tab.
Users can select any fields they would like to add to their Custom's tab.
Note Pad
From capturing our users' workflows we found that all of them uses an external Note Pad application to help them copy and paste information when switching between different modules or software. Adding this tool will allow users to stay with their accustomed workflow and have the comfort of not using an additional notes application.
Users can quickly access the Note Pad.
Latest Modification
A customer's profile in Account Management
may be modified by different users. Having quick access to view the latest modification made on the profile comes in handy when having to troubleshoot problems with a customer's account.
Users can quickly see the latest modification made on the customer's profile.
New Look and Feel
A Friendlier UI
Upon deciding on the look and feel of the software, we wanted it to look
user-friendly and personal, which meant we had to discard the original
industrial look and feel. We decided on several design guidelines that can be implemented throughout the entire software.
Typography & Color
Our guidelines for typography and color enables us to create a cohesive UI. Staying true to Evergent's DNA, we were mindful of Evergent's Corporate Identity Guidelines when making our decision.
Typeface and Color Theme used in the redesign.
Just Got Personal
Inspired by Material Design, we wanted to build a deeper connection between the user and interface by introducing an almost tangible look and feel.
Showcase of some UI elements used in the redesign.
New Business Unit
Unlike Account Management, New Business Unit only serves a singular function which is to create a new business account for Evergent's clients and is only used by Evergent's Business Analysts. With over 90 fields that could be filled out, we decided to simplify and organize them based on the workflow of Business Analysts.
Opportunities For
Improvement
From research, we discovered that new fields were added over the years to the module which affected the overall layout.
We interviewed Business Analysts and found out that they were accustomed to the layout and that they have no problem completing it, however, many agree that there is room for improvement.
There is an opportunity to group similar fields. For example, many of the fields in Billing parameters are checkboxes to enable Automatic functions in the account. These field could be grouped so that they are no longer scattered out.
For Threshold Parameters, the 50 fields can be reordered to match the Business Analysts' workflows.
The fields are also mainly composed
of checkboxes and text boxes.
For every checkbox that is located between a text box, Business
Analysts will have to relocate their
hands between the mouse and keyboard which isn't a pleasant experience if done repeatedly.
The import section should be the first thing on top.
Current version of New Business Unit
Proposed
Solution
Organization
Similar to Account Management, we used Modules to organize multiple fields of information and improve readability.
We were able to validate the rearrangement of fields through
user testing sessions where
we've received positive feedback.
Stacked
Unlike Account Management where Modules are structured for minimum scrolling, New Business Unit's Modules are stacked to make sure Business Analysts go through every Module before creating a new business unit.
Threshold Parameters
We've given special attention to Threshold Parameters. Checkboxes and text boxes are separated so users can complete them faster.
New UI design for New Business Unit.
We are glad to hear that our designs for Account Management, New Business Unit, and other modules are being implemented to the software.
I would like to personally thank Vijay Sajja for the internship opportunity, Ravi for the mentorship, Lisa and Shruti for taking
great care of me, and Pooja for being an amazing co-worker.
© 2018 Evergent Technologies, Inc. All contents on this page has been read and approved for publication.