Improving the Kingland Platform: Behind the Scenes

You're using your software or platform of choice and you need to perform a search, manage or update your profile, or change your password. Is it difficult to complete one of these tasks? Did you get stuck? How did you expect the task to happen?

These are a few of the questions we work on each day as we redesign and upgrade the Kingland Platform.

We focus on usability testing to give us insight into where improvements are needed. Users may say things such as "I thought this button was going to do more" or "I really wish I could sort these alphabetically, but there's no button for that." This can provide insight into what needs an update. Usability testing allows us to understand how clients believe the system should work, and the data we gather from watching clients interact with the system and answering questions allow us to provide the best solution possible.

It's important to conduct usability testing early. According to the book "Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach," any error found early in the process is 10 times less expensive to correct than fixing it during the design phase.

Before diving in, let's provide some definitions.

• User experience - This covers the feelings and reactions users have with an application or product.
• User Interface - This involves the visual, white space, colors and contrast.
• Usability - This answers the question, "can people complete their tasks/job?"

Of the three, we believe usability is the most important because people will be forgiving if something is off color, but if they can't use a solution to do the expected job ... there's a major problem.

Reaching the Finish Line
The UI/UX team is tasked with incorporating the current needs of clients with the forward-thinking vision of what clients will need in the future so the Platform is as flexible as possible.

For example, something as mundane as resetting a password for logging out of the system can improve how well users interact with the Platform. Early testing on tasks such as searching for records, assigning users, updating a hierarchy and more have shown incredible improvement. We've recorded a 4 minute efficiency change for updating a hierarchy from some of the early redesign elements incorporated in our initial testing phase. Some of the UI/UX items we're currently working on will help provide a great first impression. First impressions are important to us. 

The image above is a screenshot of sample data that depicts our UI and design work. 

We are planning another round of usability testing and are looking for individuals who use Kingland software to complete their tasks and get their feedback on the new designs. We'll reach out to some of you soon about contributing to our UX improvements and shape the look, feel and usability of the Kingland Platform.

Stay tuned for more updates on how we're improving your experience with the Platform.