How to simplify the User Experience of your Software?
New Software & apps are designed with excellent user experience in mind.
What about old and existing Software?
How can you fix an extensive software that is not user friendly to reclaim its shine and simplify it?
In this article, I will share what steps you need to take (and what steps are not necessary!).
1) Bring everything together.
Have one portal for accounting and one App for dashboards and yet another to view sales data?
Bring it all into one Web-app and One Mobile App.
Users get very frustrated when they need to jump to multiple Apps within your ecosystem.
You can keep it separate in the backend, but your customer should feel like it’s all one App.
This step will take a significant development effort, but it will 10x your SaaS value.
Let me know if you have this challenge?
2) Take inventory of your features.
After many years of building your Software and serving your customers, things change.
It’s inventory time!
Take stock and list all your features on a Google Sheet and do the following:
?? Survey your customers what features they like and use most
?? Analyze the analytics from Google, HotJar, or Full Story to see what’s happening
?? Then, score your features based and how much it’s used
These steps will give you a reliable vision of what features you’ll kill.
3) Kill unused features.
Yes, you heard correctly.
Those features that your team worked months on.
?? Just tuck them away.
It might be very painful for you to do this.
But you’ll thank me later!
How to safely kill features to clean up you App’s design:
?? Let your customers know three months in advance what you are killing
?? Explain clearly to users what will happen with the related data
?? Educate your users why you’re killing it, and how they can accomplish the same task in a different way
?? Don’t remove them right away — hide them in a hidden place for a while
4) Get inspiration — look around.
You might be in your box — for many many years.
It’s time to look around at newer Software and get inspired by their simplicity.
Here is how:
?? Create a trial account with similar Software
?? Take screenshots of views that interests you
?? Take notes on each Software what you like (and hate)
This exercise will open your eyes and see new possibilities! Amazing.
5) Sketch out a simpler version on paper.
?? Get away from your screen.
?? Go out of the office.
?? Buy a clean sketchpad.
?? An inky pen.
Start sketching a fresh and simple design!
Yes, you can.
?? Sketch the new navigation and the main feature pages.
New ideas will begin to pour! To flow!
I hope this article will inspire you to consider simplifying your enterprise software!
Your customers will bless you. :)
Head of design UI/UX
4 年Design audit is most important part and classifying it. UX interactions and usability main focus should always be easy to adapt as per the age group and niche you are focusing.
iOS Engineer | Content Creator | Conference Speaker | #Swift #SwiftUI #Combine #UIKit #Xcode
4 年Nussi Einhorn, love the article and your work in general. Well done ??
I help startup founders build faster by helping them define their MVP in a fraction of the time | Building digital products for over 30 years | MBA Instructor | 2x Podcaster | Fiction Author
4 年Good article Nussi, a bit too simplified at times. I wholeheartedly agree that some features have to be sunset though more evidence might be required. Sometimes good features are not used not because no one need them but because they are so hidden no one can find them. So experimenting different approaches as well as proper user guidance can be tried first. To find what features users are using I would recommend Pendo.io - by far the best product for this. Google Analytics is good for marketing sites but I never found it too useful for feature usage. HotJar is good to see individual user journey, but Pendo will give you feature based usage per any segmentation you need. I’ve heard FullStory is cool too, didn’t have a chance to try it. As for 3 month notice to sunset feature - I would say it’s case by case basis. Some might need it - especially if there are some user using it. Some won’t need much, especially if no one is using them.
Helping companies attract top talent by reducing applicant drop-off rates.
4 年This is great! Recently I have started to research about UX and I am learning a lot through your posts.
Senior UX/UI ProductDesigner
4 年Love this