A data-driven
platform that creates automated insights.
MonitorFirst Platform can be integrated with any number, text or image. It has delivered value across e-commerce, healthcare, pharma, banking, manufacturing and hospitality companies amongst others.
The platform can be further described by the features it offers to the customers on its platform.
​
Visibility: The platform collects, monitors and evaluates enterprise wide-data on a regular basis. This would help the user view KPIs and metrics easily for any period of time.
​
Insights: MonitorFirst offers capabilities of providing insights that were once the result of long-drawn talks, meetings, discussions, long email threads and recurring tasks of making presentations.
Execute: MonitorFirst offers pre-constructed apps for KPIs on standard/templated industry data across e-commerce, healthcare, pharma, banking, manufacturing, and hospitality companies amongst others.
My Role
I led the Product Design - User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) - of this project. I was closely working with the Developers & Product Managers (who were also the co-founders). I was the first designer to get hired at Byte Prophecy and created their design system along with their products from scratch.
Company
Byte Prophecy
(Part of Accenture - May 2020)
Year
2016-2018
Platform
PWa, Web
User Research
Secondary Research
Wireframing
Screen Flows
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Design System
Skills
Tools
Research & Insights
The design process consisted mainly of doing secondary research to understand the product, users, the approach and the client & their requirement better.
The design process consisted mainly of doing secondary research to understand the product, users, the approach and the client & their requirement better.
• Mobile vs Desktop - A Research Study
• Mobile vs Desktop - A Research Study
MonitorFirst is a mobile first approach. I did some secondary research to understand what makes it easier for for users to use desktop over mobile or vice versa. Also, I tried to understand how the mobile market has grown over the past few years and how it has impacted the products.
MonitorFirst is a mobile first approach. I did some secondary research to understand what makes it easier for for users to use desktop over mobile or vice versa. Also, I tried to understand how the mobile market has grown over the past few years and how it has impacted the products.
MonitorFirst is majorly a mobile first approach which makes it easier for users to get easy access to their insights at all times as well as while travelling.
There is always a debate on which is a better approach. Being an analytics platform, it was important to understand the requirements of the user as well as understand the constraints or advantages one approach may have over the other.
10%
Increase in mobile users in the last one year
50%
B2B inquires made on mobile phones
52.1%
is the mobile market share worldwide as compared to desktop which is 44.2%
40%
of the people search only on a smartphone
User's tend to use mobiles and desktop differently - depending on the environment, context, intent, etc. Understanding the behaviour is key to understanding how to provide the best experience to the users, depending on the features the product would have,
MonitorFirst is majorly a mobile first approach which makes it easier for users to get easy access to their insights at all times as well as while travelling.
There is always a debate on which is a better approach. Being an analytics platform, it was important to understand the requirements of the user as well as understand the constraints or advantages one approach may have over the other.
10%
Increase in mobile users in the last one year
50%
B2B inquires made on mobile phones
52.1%
is the mobile market share worldwide as compared to desktop which is 44.2%
40%
of the people search only on a smartphone
User's tend to use mobiles and desktop differently - depending on the environment, context, intent, etc. Understanding the behaviour is key to understanding how to provide the best experience to the users, depending on the features the product would have,
Understanding the user
MonitorFirst Platform caters to business, sales & operation based users. The target users for this platform were CEOs, CFOs and Sales & Operations Heads. The job responsibilities mainly included:
Planning strategies & targets for growth
Leading, Guiding, Directing & Evaluating performance
Understanding customer problems
Connecting with customers better via different channels
Setting business targets & planning for the future
Updating with new tech, products, competition, etc
Improving under performing areas to avoid loss
Improving the overall experience of the product
In order to understand the user, I asked questions to gain an understanding on how the users conduct their daily business or job requirements. Some of the questions I asked the users were:
-
Tell me about which screen size you usually prefer to use for work? Why one over the other?
-
How often do you travel? Does it affect your decision taking time?
-
Tell me about the process and time you spend in planning & strategising to expand the business?
-
Tell me about the platforms/products you use to view the insights and performance of your products & services?
-
Do you still require spend time in visualisation of data? If yes, why?
-
At present, how long does it take you to convert your data into insights?
-
What steps have you taken the to solve the business performance problems?
Understanding the Problem
Today, most of the business industry derive analytics and insights through long and tedious meetings which at times do not give fruitful results. Some enterprises are stuck in a recurring task of monitoring and delivering insights which then get hidden in powerpoint presentations.
-
Dashboards focus on snapshots but not on the evolution
-
Charts and visuals are higher focus than the relevance of KPIs
-
All KPIs across the enterprise not available at one place
-
Ability to use the product across multiple platforms
Identifying Design requirements
Based on interviews and business requirements, basic design and tech requirements were identified. These were then segregated so that it would give a direction during the designing and ideation.
Clean & intuitive interfaces
Quick and easy automated insights
Visual design (Font size, colour, weight, hierarchy & spacing)
Interactive data viz focusing on planning and strategy as well
Storing KPIs across thr org for quick ref
Consistent data components (charts, metrics, etc)
Scalable product for integration of info from all biz sectors
Mobile first approach as target users need to make quick decisions
Easy to understand and execute.
Scalable product for easy use across all depts
Areas of Improvement
Benchmarking
Creating the flow
Ideation
After understanding the users and their requirements, a basic user flow was created and then I moved on to the initial sketches. Since Design is an ongoing process, a lot of the initial versions went into testing with the clients on functionality and strategy. Based on the feedback I worked on the improvements.
Final Designs
After working on the wireframes, final screens were worked created. These were designed keeping in mind the requirements of the users and regularly taking feedback from the clients.
Testing & Release
How testing impacted design.
The platform was regularly tested with clients and stakeholders on various parameters for functionality and feasibility. Some of the points that emerged during the testing were:
-
A variety of business sectors used the same platform which meant understanding their data structure and creating scalable and at the same time consistent components
-
Interactive charts needed to be continuously tested out with all the stakeholders in order to check their feasibility and use.
-
Lack of access to past data at times resulted in improper data visualisation.
-
Features required by some business sectors needed to be tested out with other sectors as well in order to maintain consistency.
-
Since the product was built for scale and had a large integration of data it was necessary to have a robust storage system so that the system did not lag.
In 2020, Byte Prophecy was acquired by Accenture.
My Takeaways
This was a very interesting yet challenging experience. Most of the platform experience heavily depended on the font (weight, size, colour, etc), hierarchy, spacing, etc. Some of my key takeaways were:
-
Visual Design can really be helpful while explaining a solution. Even hierarchy, font (weight, size), space and colour can greatly affect how we perceive information.
-
It is not always the photographs or pictures that bring across important information.
-
Data visualisation are not just beautiful charts. They need to be interactive and help the stakeholders make decisions.
-
It is very important to understand the job profile or differences between how different sectors operate. It greatly impacts the product.
-
In a business oriented product, user experience needs to be given more emphasis which it is not the case a lot of times. The designer needs to act as an advocate and bring the best design forward.