Private Sector

The lead developer at Commercan wanted an application that would help him to easily keep track of his billable hours by project and client. Desktop solutions were impractical and he found that he was waiting until the end of each week to collect up the time. This process was time consuming and error prone. Not finding an application that met his needs, he created a vision for his own and BeeOnTime was born.

BeeOnTime is a time tracking app designed to help you quickly track the time you spend on a project whenever and wherever you are. Instead of waiting for your computer to load or your time sheet document to open, BeeOnTime lets you track project time when you only have a minute to do so. You can track time for any project and any client in one place. BeeOnTime is able to export the time sheet for a specific time period to a spreadsheet format and deliver it to an email address. Commercan understood how important the user experience is to the success of mobile applications and contacted Analytic Design Group for help.

ADGi provided a number of services including a usability assessment, interaction design guidance, the visual design, and advice regarding user interface portability between platforms.

Playing on the "Bee" in the BeeOnTime name, ADGi suggested a honeycomb style and colour scheme. The application colours, the button icons, and the application icons were all custom created by the ADGi team. User interface elements were delivered in the specific Android format that specifies how the image is to scale in each dimension.

ADGi performed a usability assessment of the application and found several small usability issues. For example, while it was a design goal of BeeOnTime to enable the quick and easy capture of time "in the moment", the initial application required a project code to be used when entering time. ADGi recommended that a plain language project name be used instead with a project code being optional data. ADGi provided annotated wireframes to detail the proposed interaction design. Before presentation to Commercan, the basic layout was loaded onto an actual Android device to ensure that the design was easy to interact with on screen.

Other guidance provided by ADGi included advice on how to ensure a user experience that would be portable between devices. As an example, ADGi demonstrated how the calendar functionality of BeeOnTime could be modified to not only make a great Android user interface but also one that could be easily migrated to the iPhone or iPad. While the user experience should always be tailored to the user and the task at hand, our extensive experience testing smart-devices provides us with unique insight into which designs work well with all interfaces.

Lunapads is a vertically integrated manufacturer and web retailer of natural menstrual products. They primarily sell online through their website to an international clientele, with their primary market being individual women in the United States. As typical of most web retailers, the majority of visitors to their website are browsers/prospective customers and their conversion rate is approximately the industry average.

Lunapads hired ADGi to conduct user research, via a usability study, to find out what customers needed from the site and to suggest recommendations for a redesign of their website.

Working with Lunapads, ADGi defined the user segments and recruited participants for the study.

Twelve women were interviewed, each in an individual session with an ADGi facilitator, some online using an online meeting tool and some via face-to-face sessions at the ADGi office. The sessions were recorded and the facilitator watched the participant navigate through the Lunapads website. The women were given a set number of tasks to complete; however, much of the study was focused on understanding the underlying reasons and motivations for these users to get at the core reasons for why the conversions were not higher. To this end, the facilitator initiated discussion with the women during the test as well as left a lot of time to explore motivations and beliefs during the post-test interview.

We then wrote a report that contained the interview findings along with actionable and detailed recommendations for improving the website based on user feedback.

After the study was completed, Lunapads engaged ADGi to create the wireframes for the site. Armed with the extensive knowledge gained through the user research, ADGi created a set of wireframes. Working with Lunapads, the wireframes were refined through an iterative process and the final set of wireframes were delivered to Lunapads for them to work with their developers.

The need for redesign stemmed from a number of business drivers for dys architecture: they had recently added several partners to the management of the firm; they had moved to new larger offices; and they had undertaken a new marketing initiative to re-brand and re-focus the firm. To properly reflect all of these changes, they decided to redesign their site.

ADGi was invited to work on this project as a part of a virtual studio with emplus communications (who completed the visual design work) and Engine Digital (who completed the code development and CMS work).

The Process

After initial client meetings and a presentation by the market research firm, we determined that:

• The vast majority (+95%) of site visitors arrive at the site by entering the URL
• The purpose for coming to the site is, in this order, to review the DYS portfolio, to learn more about the firm, to find out about the partners
• The story behind the various projects, the firm, and the people is as important as the ‘facts’

In discussing the priorities and what we knew of user needs we knew we had to focus on the portfolio. We also knew we needed a means to highlight the story behind the facts, without getting in the way of the facts and the traditional way that architects discuss their projects. The solution needed to be bold and creative yet not flashy. It needed to stay within the character of the firm (high integrity, confident, casual, yet somewhat conservative) but also speak to the new branding.

The Solution

To bring all of these pieces together the solution provides a flat, matrix-driven structure rather than the typical hierarchical structure. After typing in the URL users are taken immediately to a page highlighting a specific project. From this page, the user can then navigate through other projects in similar categories or can go to a project index page, that shows thumbnails of all of the projects and also allows the user to filter projects by criteria such as Location and Completion. The site went live late in 2007, and is still in use today.