Being a UX (User eXperience) designer is no easy task, especially since their main objective is to constantly improve the functionality of an app or program that many users are utilizing. Having this purpose, UX designers need to make sure they filter all the feedback in order to decide how to answer the customer’s needs. How exactly are UX designers working in Azets? To answer this question, we had a conversation with one of our UX designers, Johanna Bermlid, to find out how she plans and organizes her projects to make the customer experiences even better.
CoZone is a customer portal for clients of Azets. The portal includes several applications with different purposes. Johanna’s main responsibility is the Employee application, in which employees can report their time, and attesters can approve the time reports, vacation requests and user changes, among other things. The attester can also get a summary of their employees’ worked hours, presences, absences, and transactions.
When clients asked for improvements regarding the Period summary, Johanna had to lay out her plan for meeting the clients’ needs and implement a new design accordingly. This is how Johanna worked together with the customers to improve the Employee application in CoZone:
Research - what are the customers’ actual needs?
Each project that requires a redesign also requires research. It is very important to gather all the data from the users before making changes to a program that affect functionality.
First, I decided to research the Period summary and its users. I wanted to know how clients used it and what for, what they wanted to see and what they would rather not see, and possible ways to improve the usability of the view.
To determine this, Johanna set up interviews and polls, which brought up useful information. According to the data, these were the most important findings, which influenced the outcome:
- The view is both used for observing general trends and for drilling down to single employees. In fact, a drill-down functionality to see more detailed information of the employees was highly requested.
- Tracking absence and overtime, and to see the total sum of presence and absence hours are the most important features of the view.
- There was a great need for the clients to be able to select a longer time range than one month.
- They wanted to add the employee numbers to the table
- No one seemed to be using the summary in the accordion above the table (i.e. the summary of the summary).
- If one has applied filters and then changes the time span, the filters were removed. This was annoying for the clients.
With the results in place, the next step had to be analysing the statistics:
Finally, I analysed the statistics of the view in Google Analytics, mostly to make sure there were no unexpected numbers. As expected, most page visits were in the end and beginning dates of the month, and almost exclusively on weekdays during typical office hours. As the period summary was not even available on mobile, it came as no surprise that 97% of the page visits came from a desktop device (the remaining 3% came from tablets).
Design - How to utilize the customers’ feedback
Once the feedback was collected from users, UX designers were able to begin creating the new design. The wireframing started during the research phase. Later on, discussions were held between UX designers, product owners and UI (User Interface) designers in order to come up together with a complete design. They were all cooperating to make sure that the new design features are implemented correctly and everything works as expected.
Testing - Does it work? Did we manage to solve the customers’ challenges?
When they reach a working concept, the UX designers need to test it to verify its functionality and correct any issues that might appear.
I performed five user tests remotely (excluding a pilot test with a co-worker). The users liked the design in general, using words like “intuitive” and “clear” to describe it. The pre-made filters were also received positively. The main problem was that the users had issues finding the “save filter” alternative when it was hidden inside the dropdown button. When I (after the pilot test and the first user test) moved it to a text button instead, all but one person found it easily.
Final solution - Introducing new features in CoZone Employee!
Once the previous stages are completed, the UX designers can create the final version of the features previously researched and tested. In this particular case, the main changes were as follows:
- Ability to select the time range of the summary freely. The default time range is the current year, since most users are interested in what has happened so far for the current year.
- Employee numbers were added in the table.
- The summary of the summary was removed.
- Filters persist even when the user changes the time range. However, the time range is not saved when filters are created, since that would render the saved filters useless for other time ranges.
- Due to its importance, the filter functionality was moved to the top of the view. This also reduces the need for horizontal scrolling in the table, something I was trying to avoid.
- The information that is most commonly wanted to view (absence, presence, and transactions) are available as default filters.
After Johanna’s prototype was finished, it was time for the UI designer to bring forth the final design which was handed over to the developers for implementation.
When working with programs or apps used by many users, a designer’s work never stops. Programs and apps need constant care, redesign and development so they can meet as many of the clients’ needs as possible, so they can keep up with the new trends, so they can offer the best features.
At Azets, we strive to take care of our clients and offer the best solutions through our services.
Johanna Bermlid - UX designer, Azets
She has been working at Azets for 1 year and 4 months. She is responsible for the UX of Employee since she started here. Other work tasks mainly involve the continuous work with CoZone's design system.