My first job when joining Cleo Communications as Senior UX Designer in 2014 was effectively a RESCUE mission. When I started, work was already well underway on the MOBILE version of Cleo’s browser-based “on-premises” enterprise file sharing application, Unify. Unify Mobile was intended to add access and convenience for new and existing Unify users and to perhaps dispel any perceived stigma around its on-prem roots (no mobile app, obviously, could be accused of being on-prem).
So what was going wrong? Development and Visual Design had each been separately offshored to competent contractors, but the project was not materializing into a viable product. The front and back ends were not connecting to facilitate user goals. And potential customers were growing impatient.
This is the story of how I brought this product back from the brink.
Unify Mobile running on my Samsung Galaxy S5 in 2015, shortly after its release.
UX Design I rendered for this project
What about visual design?
Cleo had a pre-established look-and-feel to which all new products and features had to adhere. I directed Cleo's Visual Designer and Interface Developers in applying that pre-established aesthetic to the sundry screens I spec'd in my wireframes.
So what was my job at Cleo? Every other dimension of UX Design: Information Architecture. Interaction Design. Usability Testing. Prototypes. Wireframes. Process. Methodology. For more on how these various UX disciplines interrelate, here is an excellent overview. You may additionally find this Venn diagram particularly instructive.
Backfilling Information Architecture (IA) …
I assessed that not enough research or strategy had preceded design and implementation. Dev was in Scotland, making agile tricky and Lean UX impossible. So I back-filled research and strategy in the course of making specific change requests. Which meant, for example, my analysis reports would include recommended fixes. And my new content model would overlay my wireframes. For more on the importance I typically place on Information Architecture, review this project.
Two-for-one Heuristic Evaluations
This heuristic evaluation was typical of those I wrote for this project. It included specific, actionable change requests because implementation had commenced. There was no time to describe problems without suggesting solutions.
Excerpt from the heuristic evaluation I authored.
Two-for-one Wireframes
This wireframe was emblematic of the several I authored for this project. Typically content models and wireframes are two discrete steps. But here I save time by re-contextualizing existing views by overlaying a new content model.
Excerpt from a low-res wireframe I authored.
Backfilling Interaction Design (IxD) …
Once the overall structure of the app was settled, I produced high-res wireframes like this to hone each workflow. Here I show both “happy-path” scenarios (solid red lines) with edge-cases (dashed red lines) for a short, economical document.
Excerpt from a high-res wireframe I authored.
Backfilling Process …
What I brought to this project was pretty elementary stuff: The UX Designer that preceded me had lost track of the basics and had succumbed to a solution-based approach. Design Thinking requires just as much focus on the PROBLEM.
The “Double Diamond Model of Design (slightly modified from the work of the British Design Council 2005).”
Strategy …
Time, as always, was a driving force in this project and we were running out of it. We had committed to a release date and our customers were counting on us to deliver. For one important customer, this product promised to address a key business need they specifically requested. We were all working as fast as we could, but some Cleo stakeholders were getting nervous.
At some point during a particularly tense meeting I suggested we focus on delivering for one platform and hold off on the other. We were attempting to deliver for both Android and iOS and there were enough differences in the way the application got expressed in either to cause significant differentiation in needed design. Deprecating one in favor of the other could buy us some time and enable us to deliver without losing face.
Some quick research revealed that Android users at that time outnumbered iPhone users by a wide enough margin to put all our focus on Android. The product manager realized that at no point had he committed specifically to delivering for both platforms and recognized the significance immediately. He approved this decision before we ended the call.
This is a core tenet of Lean UX Design. If you can’t deliver everything, deliver enough, backlog the rest and move on.
We followed on a few months after the 1.0 Android release with the iOS version.
Results …
As a result of the hard work I did on this project backfilling both Information Architecture and Interaction Design we met our release date and Unify Mobile went on to enjoy as much popularity with users as the desktop version. This is my portfolio so it is obviously incumbent upon me to focus on my contributions, but I was merely the missing piece in a team of dedicated, thoughtful, and hard-working professionals. No one team member can make or break a project of this scope all by themselves and it was my distinct honor to work alongside the kind of product people Cleo Communications is known for.
Unify Mobile was still available for download as recently as the spring of 2018.
Screenshots from Unify Mobile 1.0 at release.
“Engineers and businesspeople are trained to solve problems. Designers are trained to discover the REAL problems. A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.”
