Overview

The goal of this project was to, based on a python proof of concept, do a complete UX/UI design overhaul and develop a web application. The app is an utility for the Modelon Impact platform letting physical model developers use versioning with Git and SVN in a simple and straightforward way. As physical model developers often don't have software engineering backgrounds and thus typically won't have knowledge of versioning, the goal was to create something with a narrow but useful scope that was straightforward to use.

The team consisted of myself responsible for UI/UX design as well as development of parts of the frontend, one frontend developer, one backend developer and one project manager. The project was on a tight schedule before the end of year production release.

Responsibilities

User research

Information architecture

Interaction / UX design

Visual / UI design

User testing

Prototyping (Figma and code)

Frontend development

Process

As a proof-of-concept existed, I performed a number of interviews with users that had tried it out to see what the baseline was. It turned out that a major overhaul of the user experience was needed and as quite some material around goals and use-cases existed, we went to work with ideation in the team.

We iterated quickly to find a scope that was doable in time and would bring value to the users and ensure the main user flows were supported. I created user flows, information architectures, flow diagrams and low fidelity mockups (wireframes) as we progressed towards an application we felt confident in. I continuously tested and interviewed users with the low fidelity mockups to see how well different concepts would resonate (or not) with them.

Once we had nailed down the rough design of the app, the developers started working on the backend and middleware and I proceeded to do the high fidelity design. As the platform already had a solid branding/style which the app was to follow, the final design was fairly quick to nail down.

Once the designs were done and approved, I proceeded to support the frontend developer with coding the frontend part of the application. Development cycles were short and a continuous integration environment enabled users to test the app as it was coming together to give early feedback.

The small team worked in a very agile way with extremely little turnaround time and with fast communication and full transparency. We met regularly to tweak scope and UX details depending on status of the implementation and discovered technical difficulties.