Fast forward two years, when we finally had our chance to improve the user experience. The product team did some research with key stakeholders and identified these problems with the platform:

     -- Limited client branding

     -- Perception that the UI was “dated”

     -- Jumbotron is too overwhelming, not flexible

     -- Need for the platform to grow

     -- Lagging sales

Our team did a design sprint to achieve a new layout that would address these issues. The sprint began with a discussion of the known issues, reviewing usability test results, a heuristic review and feedback from clients and key stakeholders. We mapped out our strategy for the week (and beyond), and defined our deliverables for the week. Next, we started the process of how the revamped application might be structured, with some information architecture, making sure to keep in mind features that may be included in the future.

We then started brainstorming on layout ideas based on the IA, with lots of whiteboard drawings and paper sketches.

The sketch on the far right is the one that gained the most traction with the team, so we started riffing more on that. We made sure to walk through this with our internal stakeholders, as we brought them along for the journey. When we validating that we were on the right track, I took the sketches into Axure for some low fidelity wireframes.

After once again reviewing with stakeholders, it was time to crack open Sketch to create some design comps. These comps ended up being the deliverable for the end of the design sprint. It took many iterations of these comps to get to this point, based on stakeholder review feedback and usability testing on users in the employee role.

Download the test script for the above usability test (Word doc).

Once these comps were in a good place, we ran them not only by the stakeholders, but also had an initial unveiling of the concepts to a client (post-sprint), to get their buy-in. In addition, we did some usability testing to validate that our IA was on target. The feedback from these comps led to another iteration.

And yet another iteration, this one being the final iteration prior to going into development.

The redesign was developed over the next several development sprints, and subsequently launched last fall. The application, sporting a fresh, modern look, now allows for greater client branding (with more opportunities coming in future improvements), offers greater flexibility for promoting activities within the platform, and enhances the scalability of the product in the future. The new design has placated existing clients and led to several new sales since being rolled out.