By intentionally utilizing AR-inspired transparencies, overlays and subtle design color cues in the UI, I was able to serve user's needs and maintain consistency – equally allowing for the UI to fade into the background.

 

By coalescing around a primarily monochromatic scheme with an injection of our company’s brand color for focusing the user's attention, the end result was serious yet approachable. Upon establishing the style for the editor, I moved onto rolling it out across the workflow template and all associated views. Through close collaboration between myself and the devs, we were able to integrate the re-design and deploy it to our user base. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to interview a handful of our users to get a better sense of the impact. Although the responses weren't truly qualitative, they were encouraging.

"With it's brand new look and feel, it's so easy to use. I love how the panels are somewhat transparent and appear to fade away, allowing me to focus on my scene and content creation!" – Site Manager

Throughout, I created, deployed and evolved a Design System Library from this work, eventually containing all elements and components as a single “Source of Truth". From this we would have a common language to speak and a uniform style to guide us as we moved into the design of our proprietary suite of mobile applications. The color palette was established. Iconography was in place. Things were really beginning to look up!

Scene 1. Take 2. Our initial goal had been successfully attained. 4D Studio® had emerged with a stunning new face. Our second directive was to identify and improve problem areas within the current user experience - all the while adding new features. As we started this next phase of work, I knew I needed to observe and interview our users to better understand their needs. Learning comes from not only observing but talking to users to identify their real-world problems and pain points. Unfortunately, I had little support internally for user testing. I would simply need to get strategic. The target users of our software were known. We had a number of paying Fortune 500 clients. However, access to them was limited. I had to get creative in order to gather real data and distill it into actionable insights. Under these constraints, I used any opportunity to engage with users to get a concrete understanding of their needs and desires. On one occasion, I crashed our company's AR World Expo event at corporate headquarters and observed and interviewed every attendee that was willing. I made some important connections that would come back to serve me again – later in this story.

Armed with my newly acquired findings, I was able to return and use them to assist my decision making and adjust my assumptions. A few of my earlier hunches kept surfacing with our users – primarily animation was problematic. Now there are many ways to measure design changes to determine whether they meet the intended goals. But what cues and metrics would I use to determine I reached my goal upon completion? To help gauge our success, I settled on a series of user-centered metrics that allowed me to measure the changes we were intending.

By synthesizing user feedback from my gorilla research, I had a lens through which I could identify problematic areas and measure success by not only how it looked but how it functioned. Emotional design is one thing, intuitive user experience is yet another.

I focused on foundational user journeys. The core flows that users engaged in to accomplish their main goals. Our animation component was one of those. Intuitively, I knew there were usability issues. Testing our existing implementation and my new concepts revealed the pain points.

It was apparent our animation component was not very intuitive –  it didn't even follow the recognized best practices for the most common features. For improvements, I first iterated on a more intuitive design following these known standards and later paper prototyped my end results. I tested it with individuals both familiar and those completely unfamiliar with the software. This process led me to make some minor tweaks to my original assumptions.

Prototyping is relatively cheap to do and can be quick to create, making it a cost-effective method to validate and improve the user experience within the feedback loop. Paper prototypes became the star of the show given my limited internal support for actual user testing.

Paper prototyping can be a valuable and revealing activity in design a process. Screenshots are depicted to help determine how the design/product might appear and a users' response to controls or functions is tested. Paper prototyping is a cheap-and-easy way to help shape conceptual functionality. If used early, unwanted waste in development costs can be avoided. It’s also useful in brainstorming, when searching for how to address users’ problems best. This “down-and-dirty” or guerrilla testing allowed me to informally test ideas with users and course-correct as needed.

However, the most challenging skill of a designer can be called creative selection. This runs throughout a project. It boils down to knowing when to say no. It's about trusting your gut and experience. It's about having great taste and always striving to refine and improve it.

This was as true now, when distilling user feedback on design iterations, as it was at any point in my journey to create a more streamlined, meaningful and friction-less experience for our users.

I have an insatiable curiosity and a bias for action. I'm not afraid to take calculated risks that can challenge the status quo - pushing the boundaries and striving for excellence - while learning from start to finish.

As usual, I learned a lot. Following are a few key points:

 

#1 Users have changing behaviors and expectations. What is true today, most likely won't be true tomorrow. Furthermore, once you expose them to a better way of reaching their goals, their goals can and will expand.

 

#2 Eliminating friction can be one of the most powerful 'additions'. Often by simply saying no to an additional feature, or by removing elements of a screen or flow altogether can yield powerful outcomes.

 

#3 Users increasing expect a more seamless engagement. This should go without saying. But along with it comes their reward when you truly match their expectations.

 

The team learned a lot. It was evident that they learned the importance and value of process throughout. I believe the CEO learned a little too - there is value in getting users involved in the creation of a product. Because when you optimize for one, you optimize for none.