UNDERSTAND

Model and Understand Users for Validated Application UI

The key to making software applications and UI development pay off is to ensure they are easy to use and efficient for everyone including employees, customers and partners. Software designed without user modeling and validation eats up the incremental dollars to our customer's bottom line.

Unlike the back end of applications that run behind the scenes in the form of business rules or financial calculations, the UI for a project cannot easily be changed after deployment due to issues with user training and productivity loss. It is essential to understand the users and get the UI right, before any code is developed. This is particularly true for applications that are used continuously, such as online banking, data entry systems, and call center applications.

An Agile Approach to UI Design

By modeling and understanding the most important and common user goals and making the initial interface support these goals effectively in terms of efficient navigation, appropriate feedback, and a minimum of distraction, Catalyst can quickly test the UI with real users for quick turnaround and validation early in the development process.

What is a Persona?

Personas are narrative descriptions of specific users, distilled from interview and observation data of real users, who represent the goals, motivations, and behaviors of the people who might need to use the system. Personas help our UI designer understand the flow of the user's work and how each will approach the same user interface. Usability and scenario testing validates our knowledge about users so we can quickly iterate the user interface to a point where we have confidence that our initial development effort will deliver what our customers need.

DESIGN

Design to Deliver Bottom Line Results

Good design adds value. A user-validated and visually well-designed UI results in incremental saving in employee and organization performance, as well as improved customer relationships and loyalty.

The design phase of our methodology includes:

Information Architecture and Interaction Design

Based on the results of the user modeling phase, we develop the functional information architecture and navigation. The resulting application models, wireframes, navigation and control elements, functional views, data capture screens and rich messaging are optimized and tested for user comprehension.

Visual Design and Branding

The visual designer on your Catalyst team will create a differentiated look and feel within the constraints of your brand. As part of this, they will identify what kind of visual branding strategy is optimal for the audiences that will be interacting with your application.

Reusable and Modular UI Libraries

We define your UI specification using a customized library of UI components, data, and actions. When your distributed development teams have access to this UI library of modular, reusable code, they can save 85% in application front-end development cycles. The added benefits include increasing consistency of function across applications, a standardized look and reduced QA time.

Consistency across Multiple Applications

Mergers, acquisitions, and fast growth often leave a software company with a big consistency problem. If your software has several ways to search, and several ways to type in a phone number, and several ways to present a system message, you have applications that are costing real dollars in low adoption rates, and high support costs. Standardized workflows, a consistent visual design and a customized library of re-usable UI components will enable all applications to work the same way. When applications work consistently there is a big incentive to use them.

On-going user validation

A successful UI is both about how "intuitive" a design is and about the value it provides from extended use. At the end of this phase, we will have refined and tested the design to ensure it meets all functional, user and development requirements.

DEVELOP

Production Development of UI for Entire Applications

Catalyst's development phase coordinates parallel coding and technical development with rapidly iterated design to ensure that a UI can be efficiently built, meets user needs, integrates with backend processes and is dynamic enough to accommodate changing business demands. This is achieved through the use of the right multi-disciplinary people, agile design practices, code re-factoring and user-validation-driven techniques.

A "blueprint" for how to build your application - all in 100-120 days

The primary deliverable at the end of the develop phase is a complete functional definition of the application UI. This buildable blueprint includes the definition and design of all aspects of the application in terms of everything that the user experiences - what they see, what they do, what information they have access to. And we do this all in 100-120 days so you can then deliver your software project on time and on budget.

Reusable and modular UI libraries

We re-factor UI designs into a customized library of UI components, data, and actions. When your distributed development teams have access to this UI library of modular, reusable code, they can save 85% in application front-end development cycles. The added benefits include increased consistency of function across applications, a standardized look, easier adherence to regulatory compliance standards and reduced QA time.

A lean library of highly configurable UI components can also be used for rapid customer re-branding and multiple language support.

Database schema validation for "real-world" predictability

We rapidly iterate designs and systematically incorporate feedback to expose and validate that all data elements and UI components are matched to your database schema. Working with your developer team we help ensure that when a project goes live, there is predictability in how every task, every behavior and every data element will integrate with the back end business logic and technology.

Clickable models with the working UI kernel and dynamic data

As part of the buildable blueprint for Rapid Application development Catalyst typically provides a full clickable model using dynamic data of exactly what that software will be like when it is released. Clickable models provide development teams, customers and potential users with a rich understanding of the experience and functionality a software application will provide.

Support

In addition to delivering the buildable blueprints for a software application UI, Catalyst provides on-going implementation support thorough out the development cycle to ensure accurate and efficient implementation. Support is not an afterthought, but part of of the process to ensure that projects are delivered on time and on budget.