Overview
Faronics Corporation provides a range of Windows and Macintosh software for multi-user IT environments, including educational institutions, libraries, healthcare facilities, and government agencies. Paul was brought in as a usability/UX consultant and coach to help teams improve the user experience for a range of products, and to integrate user-centered design practices into existing product development processes.
Goals
- Increase the user experience design capabilities for various Faronics Product Team members.
- Provide lead interaction design whenever needed to complement on-going design efforts.
- Help establish user-centered design practices, such as goal-focused design, low-fidelity prototyping, usability testing, and remote user studies.
- Provide strategic user experience design consultation to Senior Management, and integration of user-centered design techniques into existing development processes.
Paul's Role
Paul was brought in as a usability/UX consultant and coach to help teams improve the user experience for a range of products, and to integrate user-centered design practices into existing product development processes.
Challenges
- While always a customer-centric company, user-centered design techniques were unproven and not utilized within the company.
- Multiple products being designed at the same time, with over-lapping development timelines and Product Teams sometimes having different user experience viewpoints.
- While some products have local development teams, others have at-a-distance development teams.
Approach
- Worked with Senior Management and multiple Product Teams to strategically integrate user-centered design methods into existing development processes, further enhancing the company's existing customer-centric approach.
- Tactical ad-hoc interface design feedback sessions with Business Analysts, Program Managers, and Developers, conducted both in-person and remotely via screen sharing sessions.
- Department-wide training seminars on a range of user experience design topics, including usability design principles, goal-centered design, remote user studies and usability testing.
Results
Business Analysts and Program Managers successfully integrated a range of user-centered design practices into their requirements process, including goal-centered design, iterative low-fidelity prototyping and rapid usability testing.
An example development effort where Paul provided hands-on design leadership was the re-design of the configuration process of Faronics Core v3.3, which resulted in a more streamlined try-and-buy process with the number of server configuration steps and decisions being reduced by approximately three-quarters.
With the first release of Faronics Anti-Virus, Paul again played a key role by collaborating with the product's Program Manager and Visual Designer throughout a very accelerated development timeline to ensure that the new product represented a significant step forward in terms of a functional and pleasing user experience.
Faronics Anti-Virus v1.0
Paul also provided usability and user experience consultation on multiple releases of Windows Power Save, System Profiler Standard, Faronics Core, and Data Igloo.