UX, or User Experience, has become another buzzterm in the world of software development, and is now considered by Forbes to be one of the ‘most in-demand disciplines’ within web design. Here at Shield Safety, innovation is one of our core values, this means we not only want to not keep up with the latest trends ourselves, we also want to keep you up-to-date too. Which is why we are pleased to introduce our newest blog series – ‘Compliance Centre: Giving UXtra’.
First, let’s start with the basics…
What is User Experience (UX)?
As defined by Level Up, ‘the term ‘UX design’ is used to refer to the approaches and methods employed to make sure that a website is entirely tailored and customized for its target market.’
Invision have nailed the explanation of UX with a simple analogy, asking readers to consider the following questions about the last time they ate at a restaurant:
‘What made you to choose that particular restaurant? What was your first impression as you walked in? Were you asked to wait till you were ushered to an available seat? How was the menu arranged? Did food come quickly enough? How did it taste? How was the customer service? Did your squaring up go smoothly? Would you go back again?’
The answers to these questions, including all the emotional highs and lows, define the restaurant’s user experience (UX).
So how does this translate to software? Essentially, a user’s experience of using a website, or application – including how easy it is to use – will define how satisfied they are with it. And User Experience Design is integral in this.
A brief history of UX
Whilst it might seem like UX is a relatively new term, in actual fact Don Norman coined the term back in the 90’s when he went to work for Apple. His role was to help with research and design of its upcoming line of human-centred products, for this new role he asked for the title of ‘User Experience Architect’ – the first job title of its kind!
Other key influencers in the wold of UX include Alan Cooper, who first introduced design personas in 1998, as a method for ensuring that software is built with a user centred focus. This approach enables products to be designed, using the benefits of thinking from the users’ point of view.
Luke Wroblewski, now a Product Director for Google, took UX principles one step further by bringing human usability via testing to the much-ignored area of form design and layout. He also pioneered the ‘mobile first with progressive enhancement’ approach to web applications’.
All about the goals
A foundation of a successful UX project, as pointed out by The Hipper Element, is to have a clear understanding of goals – both user goals and business goals. These goals should be the basis for UX ‘and nothing is more important’ to success design.
When it comes to our award-winning SaaS risk and safety management system, Compliance Centre, we work towards the following goals:
User goals – the reason a user would want to use software. We understand that Compliance Centre users’ goals are to reduce risk in their business and manage safety in the easiest possible way.
Business goals – our main business goal is to make safety simple for our clients, derived from our company purpose ‘We believe in making safety simple’. We aim to achieve this goal through our unique approach of embedding a safety culture in your business with our wide range of products and services. Though the main way in which we do this is through our SaaS risk and safety management system, Compliance Centre.
What do we mean when we say we are ‘Giving UXtra’?
One of the great things about SaaS products, as we looked at in our blog Benefits of using a SaaS solution, is that the supplier can continually upgrade the software without the client having to do a thing. This is exactly what we strive to do with Compliance Centre, by listening to our clients’ requests and feedback.
Recent upgrades include updating our navigation, introducing a status for our Fire module and streamlining our Dashboard – home to the overall risk status calculated by our unique algorithm.
And this is just the start… Look out for your Compliance Centre giving UXtra, and more blog posts, soon!
Are you looking for an award-winning risk and safety management system that gives UXtra? Get in touch today on 020 3740 3744 or email sales@shieldsafety.co.uk to book your demo.
