Being User Friendly

With the advent of mobile devices, creating application interfaces that are easy to navigate and understand has become a primary concern for application designers.  Since these devices don’t allow the manipulation of objects at the level currently provided by the mouse, finding new ways to display and interact with data is a challenge.  Marry that with cross platform data pollination and the issue is compounded.

Therefore when designing TMS the following questions were asked

• What platforms will be used?
• How can the user interface make traversing from the Web platform to the iPad seamless?
• How can the user experience design reduce the training requirements?
• Can the design be clean and unobtrusive while providing all the functionality elements required?

As you can no doubt see, all the above questions relate to the user and how the system is used.  Normally in software development, engineering drives the design.  However we took a 180° shift and put usability in front of engineering.  This meant that we could utilise the art of “User Experience” to drive the system design.

User Experience Design

So what is User Experience?  Wikipedia defines it as:

User experience design (UXD or UED) is a broad term used to explain all aspects of a person’s experience with the system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design, physical interaction, and the manual. It also refers to the application of user-centered design practices to generate cohesive, predictive and desirable designs based on holistic consideration of users’ experience. In most cases, User Experience Design fully encompasses traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users.

You will see from the following chapters how the User Experience paradigm has driven the application design, and it is our absolute goal to provide a system that the user can experience ease of use, and want to keep returning.

Interface Design

The interface is laid out in three distinct sections. The design of this layout is to provide a workflow that makes the application flow coherently, and in such a way that users “just know” where they are and what they can do.  The three sections are:

1. What company & where you are – The Companies & Sites bar
2. What you want to do – The Task Modules bar
3. What objects you can work with – The Assets view

This application is driven by ‘Context’.  Context is everywhere, and what your current context is dictates what you can see and do within the application.  This will become clearer as you progress through these articles.

Showing the Right Information

In business it is imperative to create an environment that help users be productive.  A quote that I came across some time ago really brought home to me how important it is for business to consider their data and how systems need to be utilised in order to realise their true potential, it reads:

“get the right information into the hands of the right people at the right time”

This quote has been underlying driving force behind the application design paradigm.  Therefore to truly understand what our requirements were we need to answer these three questions:

• Who is the user?
• What is their role in the company?
• What data do they need? 

By answering the above questions we can display only the information that is pertinent to that user, thereby removing the need to navigate through spurious data sets.

Context - What Company & Where you are

In order to start work you need to know what company you are doing the work for and where the work will be taking place.  This is the ‘Company context’, and it means that once you have selected a company, only Assets relating to that company & selected module will be displayed. 

The section is broken down in to 5 sub-sections

1. Company Name - The Company who you are doing the work for.
2. Site - The Site where you will be carrying out the work.
3. Location - The Location is where assets can be located (not all companies will have locations).
4. Filters - Filters allow you to only show the assets you want to see.
5. Search - Search allows you to pinpoint an asset quickly.

Image: Company Context Bar

What Do You Want To Do?

Once you know where you will be working, you will want to select what task you wish to perform.  The Task modules are located directly under the ‘Company Context’ menu.   This context is called the ‘Module context’, and it dictates what type of Assets will be available for you to work on.  For example: If you select the 'System module > User & Groups' only the user and group assets will be displayed. Furthermore you can easily recognise what module you are in as the modules icon will be Yellow.

Modules and their corresponding sub-modules:

1. Assets
   1. Assets  (Trucks, Tyres, Rims, Assemblies)
   2. Fleets (Groups of Trucks)
   3. Asset Groups
   4. Inspection
2. Company
3. Library
   1. Central Library (Central specifications library)
   2. Company Library (Company specifications library)
4. System
   1. Users & Groups
   2. Security (Roles & Security Scopes)
   3. System Setting
5. Forecast (not show in image)
6. Reports
7. Schedule
8. Alert
9. Safety
   1. Safety Observations
   2. Document Library
10. Sync (not shown in image) (Synchronise data between iPad and Web)

Image: Module Bar

Sub-Module Bar

Some modules also contain sub modules to further help categorise the information displayed in the data area.