Get a behind the scenes glimpse at SafetyCulture life.
Designing an app is no small feat. Things not only have to look good - they have to work well. User Experience (UX) Designers improve the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between a user and a product.
Designing solutions to problems for people can be complex, considering humans have behavior quirks, technology limitations, and resource constraints.
Along with solving problems effectively, designers need to deliver experiences that ensure the happiness and productivity of the customer.
The SafetyCulture UX team consists of a Senior UX Designer, a UX Researcher and a UX Designer. All three are tightly integrated with the engineering and marketing team and are responsible for the new features within iAuditor and SafetyCulture. They take delight in constantly improving the experience of our products.
Manoj leads the highly collaborative team on projects, calling on their unique skill sets. The group work to make iAuditor more functional and intuitive, so that users can achieve their desired outcome - fast. Each possess a deep understanding of design and the customer’s behavior and frustrations.
Meet Manoj, Senior User Experience Designer
Manoj’s background is in visual and fine arts having worked at an industrial design firm. In a past life, he also founded a User Experience startup.
“I want to create products that are truly focused on improving safety for organizations and individual users by giving them useful and easy-to-use solutions that integrate seamlessly with their workflows.”
Manoj’s day to day tasks involve identifying key problem areas in the product and analyzing user research.
“For new features I start out by mapping out user journeys based on research then I move to prototyping quick interactions based on a Lean UX approach.”
“This involves creating task flows, wireframes, interactive prototypes and then test it with users to validate our assumptions.”
“This is a constant cycle and it repeats until we know that we have completely solved or significantly improved a certain part of our product.”
Once validated, these solutions are aligned with the ongoing engineering efforts, the team schedule it for implementation.
What is next for SafetyCulture?
One of the biggest projects is to review and refine the template creation and auditing experience This is to make it easier for users to create a template and conduct audits faster.
“Our users have been requesting us to implement a simple way for auditors to assign follow up actions to others while conducting an audit.”
“We are speaking with our customers to understand how this feature should work for them and are currently mapping out various user journeys.”
Meet Robbie, User Experience Designer
In the world of software, first impressions count. If a product is great but it doesn't look good or behaves in a way that is different to a user’s perception, users will likely abandon the product.
Robbie’s interest in design sparked from an early age. This fascination led him to inventing new things and he eventually studied Industrial Design.
“The way a product looks and behaves is critical in delivering immediate value to the user up front.”
“I was introduced to the concept of usability and good design principles on day one at university.”
User Interface (UI)
“A product's User Interface is an ever changing landscape. Typically a product will grow over time to include new features and services so a product's UI has to adapt to those changes.”
“Good UI design is maintaining levels of usability as the product grows and expands without compromising the overall user experience.”
The Design Process
On a typical day, Robbie undertakes a variety of design activities including conceptualizing new product user interfaces, illustration, animation, product reviews and lean product improvement. His animation skills come to the forefront when he's creating captivating animation videos to explain complex concepts and enhance user engagement with the company's products.
“The design process I use incorporates and is driven by user experience elements such as design scope and strategy, product structure, surface elements like visual design, look and feel and interaction design.”
“The design process is not always linear, therefore a design will usually undergo several iterations before the end user sees it.”
“Once a design has been thoroughly tested and validated I work closely with the other UX team members and engineering to deliver the resulting designs to market.”
Robbie says that good interaction design is about making the user's interaction with the product as streamlined and rewarding as possible.
“Building in consistent, rewarding interaction patterns for example not only makes the product more pleasurable (and even fun sometimes) but also makes the life of the user much easier.”
Meet Gemma, User Experience Researcher
While studying a degree in Manufacturing Engineering, Gemma became fascinated by how technology is only as good as its interface.
For products to be efficient, safe and enjoyable to use, the design needs to center on the user, the environment they are working in, and the task they are trying to achieve.
This inspired her to join one of the largest user-centric design research teams in the UK and she has since gained a degree in Psychology and become a Registered Ergonomist.
Her role at SafetyCulture allows Gemma to apply the science of user research to a product that allows people to improve quality and safety around the world.
Gemma has applied her skill set aboard navy ships, in pilot cockpits and in hospital wards. Environments where poor design can cause injury or loss of life.
Understanding the Customer
Among the designers, engineers and customer support team, Gemma has the task of deeply understanding the customers and their needs. This knowledge is then applied to improvements that occur within iAuditor and SafetyCulture.
“We're usually working on a few new features or design updates so I'll survey users about their requirements and channel that into the product design.”
“Every day I'll speak to our customer support team to get a feel for what the big issues are for our customers.”
“I love being able to speak with our diverse customer base from a huge range of industries all around the world to hear about how iAuditor and SafetyCulture fit into their daily work and how we can make their lives easier.”
“My overall aim is to create a better experience for our users.”
“The main output of my work is a better informed team that can prioritise our efforts based on what will make the biggest difference to our users and shape designs around what works for our customers.”
Through her user research, Gemma hopes to empower people around the world to improve safety and quality by giving them visibility over what’s happening across their organization.
