Renata Martinez

01 Case

Create an UI to enable software engineers from China to customize platforms for differentiating features

02 Challenge

Interface that improve the engineers productivity and mitigate platform configuration errors

03 My role

In the first phase of the project I was in charge of planning contextual interviews with engineers in China. I created the script and all activities with the help of one Visual Designer, but I did not conduct the interview.

In the second phase, I lead the effort of the design team (2UX designers and 2 Visual Designers).

04 Approach

Project's main phases:
1 Research > 2 Synthesis > 3 Ideation and Prototype > 4 Concept refinement

1 Research and 2 Synthesis

First we read internal documentations and we talked to the engineer team to understand:

• The platform the engineers needed to customize (super technical documentation)

• The personas of the project

Second, we did desk research to understand some cultural aspects from China, which symbols, colors and communication tone should we use to design an intuitive and easy-to-use UI.

After immersion in the subject, I created the research plan:

• Opening Card sorting to understand how engineers grouped the items that needed to be configured in the UI

• Activity to understand which symbols were understood by Chinese developers

• Journey to understand how was the configuration routine of a platform

Guide to help the moderator

Opening Card Sorting

Icons activity

3 Ideation and Prototype

The research gives us many inputs of how to create an application for Chinese engineers. We designed some mockups to first validate the ideas, and then we created the screens and a high-level prototype. We did some informal usability tests in order to test the UI.

*Note — The mockups contain placeholder data and the number of screens is not exhaustive