Looking back

It started with a question…

“Why does this feature work like this?”

It ended three and a half years, 600 cases, and thousands of hours of scoping, design, and development later. Truthfully, it was that question repeated over several months and to many different people. I struggled to accept the answer “because that’s how the developers made it.”

It was obvious to me that there had been little consideration for the user experience for most of our features. While the developers’ level of effort is an important consideration, user experience also needs to be a priority.

After a time, I started to offer my design skills to create small mockups to help the developers have a better understanding of what the Product team was asking for. Eventually, these occasional mockups became regular things, and I transitioned onto the Product Team officially, becoming Elite EXTRA’s first ever User Experience Designer. It was my enthusiasm, and my demonstrated success with these small but detailed mockups, that ignited the spark for a rewrite of our entire software.

The initial problem

The UX was not consistent across the platform. Buttons were in different places and in different colors.
The colors and branding were drab, outdated, and didn’t meet accessibility standards.
The platform was not responsive and could not be used on a mobile device.
The existing structure made certain new feature requests more difficult or impossible.
Many features were difficult use, requiring extensive training for users just to get started with basic tasks like creating staff profiles.

The Solution

An updated UI built with React, using Bootstrap components so mobile use is possible.
A new color scheme that matches the marketing brand, is modern and clean, and offers high contrast options for improved accessibility.
A new design system that provides a consistent experience for our users, no matter what feature that they’re utilizing. Standardized tables, forms, and more.

The Results

This is the dashboard and home screen before and after the rewrite.

After just over three and a half years of work, EXTRA 10 was rolled out to all Elite EXTRA customers. This update was a major change, and it was well-received by the users. Fewer than a dozen users reached out saying that they didn’t like the updated interface. There was an uptick in support calls for a couple of weeks of users asking where to find a feature that had moved, but that also died down quickly. For an industry full of people who are typically not very tech-savvy, or open to change, this transition was a wild success.

Users reported in a survey that the updated interface is easier to use, and that they were satisfied with the updates. This experience solidified the power of putting UX first. We made major changes, and they were generally well received because the user experience was prioritized.