Redesigning the legacy software
We were designing a product for better classroom two years back. Our communication with the client ended like this:
Client: You should watch this movie Stand and Deliver for inspiration.
Us: Movie? Cool! Is it something Sci-fi? (thinking something along the line of Minority Report)
Client: No, um. it’s about a teacher and his struggle.
Us: (not exactly thrilled) Hmm!
Client: You will get some inspiration.
Us: Hmm
Client: No really!
Us: Hmm, talk to you … Bye.
Lucky for us, a weekend followed. So a movie in a lazy weekend-how wrong could that go? I decided to give it a go. Interestingly it helped me realize the client’s perspective. Turns out we were focusing on the content rather than delivery part of it. Neatly organized but lacking the interactive flow!
Déjà vu! Last month, I had somewhat similar conversation with the same client.
Client: I am sending you a link of a 2-hour long video. I think it will help you understand the working mechanism of the product.
Us: (excited) Is it a movie?
Client: Heh! No.
Us: Well, um, we will watch it later (although it was 17-minutes longer I knew I was up for some interesting watch here)
I didn’t wait for a lazy weekend. As soon as I got home, I brewed some coffee and fired up the video. However, it has no dramatic beginning or interactive prelude. For seven minutes, there was silence. Then followed some static noise and microphone checking. After that, the video had greetings and some “small talk”. By the time time-seeker reached 18 minutes, I realized I was set up by my client to watch one of the most boring webinars of a product that I had no idea about.
But hey! It was my job to redesign this product. So I braced myself through the whole video. But there was an upside- the nostalgia of Windows 95 and series of boring lectures I had survived during graduate school (combined) . By the time it reached 35 minutes, I was again interested- not because it had hidden commercial breaks or spontaneous jokes in between but two particular things caught my attention:
1. The whole software had nice complexity and was using lots of statistical algorithms to forecast the data, and
2. Whole interface was data-centric and looked like a glorified version of Excel sheet.
Eventually those two hours passed. Amid the anticipation I forgot to take notes, or let’s say I was just too bored to scribble or doodle. I didn’t give up and tried to get everyone at office watch the video. But I had already air-quoted the video as boring. Nobody gave it a shot. Nonetheless, there was a product and there was a task. So I and one of our front-end engineers watched it together, skipping the rhetoric whilst focusing on the flow. This time, we even took notes.
By the end of the day we had everything figured out- the flow and we even had general idea of the Croston Forecast. However, we were unable to sketch a single wireframe. Undecided on what data and features to highlight and ways to represent them, we were perplexed.
Lucky for us, we are surrounded by creative people all around us. One of our friends, who was visiting the office at the moment, then gave a billion dollar advice (thankfully we didn’t have to pay) “Don’t try to solve the problem you don’t understand, just try to see what people are doing with the interface.”
Jackpot! But not all gold!
Now we were to watch the skipped section of the video to understand how users were using the software. Although we’d love to do detailed ethnography with a real user, it was a one week turnover conceptual design task and we didn’t have the leverage to organize user study.
We started the tedious task of watching the video again- more attentive this time. Few re-runs and now we had a list of important observations:
Problem: The software prioritized data so much it was showing more than necessary data at once, without any meaningful interpretation.
Solution: Show chunk of data that is relevant to the user. The key is to let the user start with what is important at the moment and give them control to expand.
Problem: Number, Number, Number, Number, blur, where was I? Blur, start again, Number, Number, Concentrate, Number.
Solution: Put a visual cue and organization to the data with a simple table styling (alternate row highlight can make a lot of difference).
Problem: Comparison, understanding the individual number and interpreting it had too much cognitive load.
Solution: Color coding the number to show positive and negative skew, and focus on difference rather than having user calculate the value in mind.
Problem: The user’s role and hierarchy not reflected in software- all features were visible at all times to all users.
Solution: Add hierarchy and give relevant access to relevant user only.
Problem: Interface looks somewhat boring.
Solution: Add Rosemary, Green Chilly, Black Pepper … I mean spice it up! Give context by showing relevant product images and better types, cleaner feel.
At the end, we forwarded the mock-up to the client (with careful assimilation of all observation and key findings, of course) and I am sure we knocked their socks off! Not only were they content with the results, they even talked about another possible project.
And that’s how you do it!
Client: It’s about Mortgage management.
Us: Sure we will research into it.
Client: No problem, I’ll send you a link to the video. I think, um, you should watch it to get general idea of the product.
Us: Video?!
Client: Yes, it’s a half-an-hour news interview.
Us: Hmm!
