Accurants Research and Design Extension

Accurants is a robust ERP platform with “maybe too many features” as one research participant described it. I created an interactive prototype tour of recommended changes to the Accurants website. These opportunities were determined based on research gathered through performing a cognitive walkthrough and contextual inquiry sessions with business owners who utilize similar tools.

Users

Small retail owners/employees

Client

Accurants

My role

I performed a cognitive walkthrough to gain a better understanding of the pain points and opportunities within Accurants. Based on these results, I determined protocol goals with my team for primary user contextual inquiry sessions. During these sessions, I recorded notes and key takeaways for synthesis. I used this data to prototype improvements by sketching wireframes and then creating a high fidelity prototype walkthrough using Sketch and InVision.

Methods & Tools

  • Cognitive Walkthrough

  • Contextual Inquiry

  • Digital Prototyping

  • Miro

  • Sketch

  • InVision

  • Zoom

  • Powerpoint

  • Pencil and paper

Cognitive Walkthrough

Goal: I identified the focus for the contextual inquiry protocol goals.

Findings: The most usability issues occurred in the task of adding items to the inventory. The multiple menus and wording of menu items made the page to add an item difficult to find.


Contextual Inquiry Sessions on Zoom

Three participants with experience using similar tools to Accurants remotely showed me how they perform the tasks of their business. Then they performed a usability testing session on Accurants and gave me insights on how it could or could not work for their business.

Goal: To gain insights on the pain points and opportunities for the usability and functionality of the application.

Findings: Users said the program had everything they needed, but it may be too robust for their small businesses. Poor visual hierarchy organization led to navigability issues. I used these insights as the basis for my improvement prototypes.

Research Findings and Prototype Plan

Because these users each had previous experience with similar tools, there was a mental model already in place for the expected functionality. Important icons, such as add inventory, are not prioritized well with little visual hierarchy creating a missed opportunity for workflow shortcuts.

Based on the contextual inquiry research, I felt that the users needed the ability to customize this extremely robust program exactly for their needs. By giving the user the ability to reorder the icons based on priority and hide the icons they do not use, it will solve the problem of the user who thinks “It seems to have the features, all the features that I want, maybe too many features.”

Accurants has three different ways of navigating to the different pages within the program, and this caused confusion with all of our users. My recommended change is to keep the one drop-down menu on the top navigation because all three users knew to use this to navigate. It would be organized in the same order that the home dashboard is organized by the user.

Based on the contextual inquiry research, I learned that all of our users were small business owners on the side of a full-time job. Because of this, they have little free time and need their tools to optimize efficiency. This is why I designed the inventory page with a large “+” icon to add inventory to save the user clicks. I also changed the menu option from “Catalog” to “Products & Services” because our research participants did not know what “Catalog” referred to. I also designed the side menu to be the same color as the background of the main section of the page for better cohesion because all of our users ignored that menu and were not sure if it was even part of the program.

High fidelity prototyping in sketch for the interactive prototype walkthrough.

Digital Prototype

I provided the client with a high-fidelity interactive InVision prototype tour.

In the prototype, the blue dots on the screen are tour points that will explain the recommended changes, the reasoning behind them, and how to proceed by clicking the hotspots.