Improving the UX of Blueriq Encore

Project description

Blurbo is working on Blueriq's recently new modelling editor called Blueriq Encore, and currently is requiring UX/UI experts in order to validate the usability of the new model and take note of any pain points that are available.

Our main research question is:
What are the current usability issues within Encore & how to overcome them?

Followed by sub-research questions:
- What is Blueriq Encore and its capabilities?
- How can we improve some specific features and functionalities within Blueriq Encore?

Context

Blueriq is a software company based in Den Bosch. They specialize in building modeling software for custom solutions.

Since 1995, Blueriq has been helping organizations with optimizing their customer experience. Blueriq does this with their unique solutions which combine technology, expertise and approach. In this way, Blueriq can constantly help organizations with creating the perfect, personal service.

Blueriq has been working on their new Blueriq Encore Studio environment for 2 years already. But due to time constraints, they haven’t been able to focus on the User Experience of the product. This is where we of Blurbo come in, Blueriq asked us to perform an UX review on Encore and come up with solutions for these User related problems.

The Blueriq Encore Studio environment is based on Blueriq's previous Studio environment. Furthermore, this environment is being used by professionals,inside and outside Blueriq.

Results

With achievements of the focus group yielding valuable results and findings that would kickstart the discovery phase on the decision table, which then followed by multiple iterative brainstorming sessions that resulted in listing and visualizing pain points and potential solutions of the editor, into forming a clickable visual representation of said solution and co-reflected by peers and stakeholders for feedback and yet more iterations, it is clear that there have been several usability issues that remain within the environment, and that mostly correlates to the system status, user control and navigation of the decision table editor:

- Lack of distinction between active / inactive states.
- Unclear distinction/differences between elements (mainly condition and action cells).
- No clear direction of navigation, or the lack of supporting tools thereof.
- Lack of clear user feedback and error prevention.
- Unclear container/location of history logs.

These problems that appear within as both major and minor features are spread throughout the Encore and decision table ecosystem. Through our subjective eyes, and justified through the usage of Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics and UX Laws, we are able to triangulate and evidently respond to these problems with an advisory list, alongside visual assistance in order to fix the issues for a better performance, for users old and anew:

- Clear distinction between condition, alternative, and actions.
- Consistent indication of states (Active / Inactive)
- Breadcrumb navigation
- Toolbar + autofill suggestion cell element
- Autofit content of cells
- Importance of Undo and Redo Actions
- Presence of History Logs

About the project group

Blurbo is a Media Design company formed from as our Fontys Media Semester 6 Group, for conducting associated group projects within the semester. Five bi-weekly sprints have been spent for this project, with weekly stand-ups being done every Tuesdays with main operations within the premises of Strijp TQ.