Be obsessive about the User Experience

Before the summer holidays, I wrote about what I wanted to work on now that everybody else was on vacation. I had one week of vacation in July, then I’ll have another in August, and finally, I will have one in September. So, during the three to four weeks in July when I was working, and everybody else was in vacation mode, I chose to deep-dive into the design and user experience of Herodesk.?

I’ve known for some time that the UI / UX needed an overhaul. Marketing can attract many customers, but if the product is poor—not up to par with the alternative solutions—they’ll quickly churn.?

Users’ expectations of the software they’re using today are sky-high. Just look at the standard Apple has set for software design, how nice everything looks and feels, and how great it’s working—smooth, intuitive, and bug-free. That’s the standard today and the level customers expect when using software.?

If you want to compete in software today, you must be obsessed with the user experience of your product. It has to be world-class.

Add on top of this that the customer service tools landscape is filled with global companies that have world-class software developers and designers, offering great products to their customers. So, if you want to compete in that space, there’s simply no room for half-hearted or semi-good-looking products. If you want to compete in that space, or in any other space for that matter, you must be obsessed with the user experience of your product to stand a chance.?

I’ve spent the last year or so adding many features to Herodesk. It really has many great features that support small and medium-sized businesses in centralising, organising, and optimising their customer service. We’re not done yet, and many more will be added in the future, but now that the company is starting to gain traction and add new users daily, I feel it’s the right time to take a step back and “give some love” to the core product and the UI / UX.?

Over the last couple of months I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our customers on the design. It didn’t work well on smaller screens. A lot of space was wasted, especially vertically. And it wasn’t always intuitive how to navigate in Herodesk.

Going into this project, I knew it would be huge, so it was great to do it over the summer when there were fewer meetings, etc., and more time to deep-dive.

So, without further ado, here’s what changed:

• The top menu has been moved to the left to allow more vertical space for conversations and widgets

• The inbox list has been updated and now includes a list of all team members and their pending conversations
• You can natively set an emoji for each inbox to make it more intuitive what kind of conversations it contains
• All margins, paddings, spaces and other design elements have been fine-tuned so everything is perfectly in line and consistent throughout the system
• The colour scheme has been updated to give Herodesk a more calm look

At a glance, it might not look like a lot has changed, but the devil is in the detail, and there's been some substantial improvements.

Here’s the result:?

You can see the old design in my last post here.

UI / UX is an ever-evolving process, so it’ll never be “done”, but I’m really happy with this result.

Now, there’s a great foundation to keep building on, and most importantly, it’s a massive upgrade for all our users, making Herodesk easier and “just nicer” to work with.