For AEVIC Corporation
Promoting "customer-first" application development through the power of UX design
Interviewee
UniQooOne Engineering Manager
Tsubasa Hariya
summary
AEVIC, an “IT technology group,” is engaged in IT consulting, in-house application and service development, and contracted system development. The young development team ” UniQooOne ” is responsible for the development of in-house applications. The team’s mission is to “make people’s lives better,” and for the past several years they have been creating and providing applications that are closely related to users’ lives and work.
Mr. Hariya, the manager of the team, recalls the situation before experiencing TDC SOFT’s UX design service: “The team was seeking to acquire and apply systematic methods and knowledge to the development process in order to provide something that would please users more. We decided that UX design would be useful for us, and we started working on acquiring skills. However, we learned about learning content without knowing which parts would be useful to us, and we were unable to realize the benefits or gain practical experience to apply them to our projects. We were not able to apply the knowledge to our projects,” he said.
TDC SOFT Inc. proposed and conducted a heuristic evaluation of the project management application ” SaqQutto. The degree of improvement was listed and visualized, including the degree of importance. In addition, the client attended TDC SOFT’s basic UX design training course so that they could practice UX design on their own. The practical, work-oriented training enhanced the development team’s knowledge and experience, and they are now working to improve “SaqQutto” and plan a new “customer-first” application that incorporates UX design. Development is now underway for a release in February of next year.
Issues and Background
The team would like to accelerate the planning and development of applications to provide more value to users, but because of their limited experience in planning and development, the team had not yet established a method for planning and developing applications that would make users happy, and they did not know how to achieve a “customer first” approach. The team did not know how to plan and develop applications that would make users happy, and they did not know how to achieve a “customer first” approach. In addition, the usability tests conducted by AEVIC during application development did not detect enough problems and issues, and the policy was to consider countermeasures based on the results of user surveys.
Services Utilized
This time, TDC SOFT Inc. provided ” UX design work support and UX design training ” to the company. Since the application “SaqQutto” had just been released, we proposed a training service that would give priority to immediate evaluation and then enable all development team members to practice UX design.
point (1) Heuristic evaluation
Expert Perspectives and Specific Examples
The 10 heuristic principles proposed by Jacob Nielsen (*1) and their specific examples are clearly stated at the end of the report so that the expert evaluator can understand how the system is viewed and evaluated when he or she receives the diagnostic report.
This increased customer understanding during the diagnostic report.
- Leading researcher on website usability (viability)
Sharing specific feedback
To make it easier for designers and developers to take action, specific improvement plans and action suggestions were described for each of the 60 problems identified and proposed at the time of the diagnostic report.
This enabled the client to imagine a concrete image of the improvement and to proceed with the improvement study.
Point 2: Basic UX Design Training
Provide an interactive learning environment and content
Since the training service was attended by members of the development team, the familiar AEVIC in-house environment was used to enable relaxed and active participation in the training, and an environment where sticky notes could be posted all over the walls was provided.
In addition, to maximize the learning effect (group discussions, workshops) within the team, we chose to hold the training in a face-to-face format. By incorporating many interactive activities, participants were able to acquire practical skills.
Managerial thoughts on the issue
Mr. Hariya, the manager of the team “UniQooOne,” recalls those days and spoke of the two thoughts he had in response to the challenges.
First, our development team was composed mainly of young members who were very eager to learn new technologies and knowledge, and who were formed with the goal of introducing the potential and challenges of young people to the world. For my part, I focused on increasing the skills and motivation of the members, which would lead to better team performance.”
Second, the team recognized the need for a superior UX in order for their application to maintain its competitive edge in the marketplace, and decided to hone their UX design skills and apply them to the application. However, since there were no UX design experts on the team, each member of the team sought out the skills they thought were necessary in practice and worked to acquire them, relying mainly on books and web information. I was concerned about whether the skills I had acquired from unsystematic information would be useful in improving the application.”
In hearing from Mr. Hariya about the current status of the development team, he expressed his desire to be able to create something that would please users more as a team and to be able to grow the existing applications, including SaqQutto.
Based on the current situation and their requests, we explained the level of difficulty and practicality of the training provided by TDC SOFT Inc. and the scope of the UX design process, and proposed a training course that would cover the basics and a subsequent deployment plan for the team, in line with the current team status.
In a post-training questionnaire, one participant commented, “I really enjoyed the training, from the basic knowledge to the hands-on experience of the practical part. I have not had enough time to learn UX design, so I would like to continue to familiarize myself with UX design as a team and be able to express many opinions. and “I would like to experience the practical part with an app we are releasing. I would like to convey the necessity of UX design to other team members, so I will work with those who participated today to spread the concept. Another commented, “We are not a team that usually engages in a lot of discussions, but during the training, we got used to discussing things and became able to proactively express our opinions to each other. I would like to make use of this attitude toward communication in the future. All participants expressed 100% satisfaction with the training, with positive comments such as, “We were not a team that usually had many discussions, but during the training, we got used to the discussions and were able to actively express our opinions.
The results of the survey were also shared with Mr. Hariya. Mr. Hariya said, “Half of the team members attended the training, but I shared the content with those who were unable to attend. Now, it has become commonplace for the team to talk from the user’s perspective, and when we receive an inquiry from a user, we not only take in the need, but also think about what insights are behind the need. He says, “We are now able to think about what kind of insights are behind the needs of our customers.
summary
SaqQutto,” for which heuristic evaluation was conducted, has now grown to an application used by 10,000 users. By incorporating UX design into the growth phase, the company began to receive comments from users when they inquired about new applications, such as, “I found this application to be very easy to use. Mr. Hariya says that he feels the results of his UX design efforts.
When asked what kind of companies and organizations TDC SOFT’s UX design services are recommended for, he replied, “Companies like us that start planning and development with a small team and want to develop not only knowledge but also a mindset within the team and link it to action. We can recommend it to companies like ours that start planning and development with a small team and want to build not only knowledge but also a mindset within the team and link it to action. We can recommend this program to companies like ours that want to start planning and development with a small team, and want to foster not only knowledge but also mindset and action within the team.
Regarding the future, he said, “Last year, we had a team of nine members, but this year we have a team of 15 members. We would like to share what we have learned and accumulated in UX design with the new team members and continue to work on it so that it will take root as a natural part of the team’s thinking,” he said.
AEVIC Corporation
Founded in 2007, the company is an IT technology group company. The company provides software, apps, web development, SES, and other services. ToDotto," a to-do and schedule management application planned and developed in-house and released in 2020, has achieved 80,000 downloads and has been featured on TV and other media. In 2021, the company released " SaqQutto," a project management application. A new app is scheduled to be released in February 2024, which should help "make life better for everyone involved.
Technologies Used
UX Design
The CX/UX design process is essential to achieve true DX. We support the creation of experiences that truly delight the user by correctly connecting the user’s latent needs with the customer’s aspirations.
