Align
Align is a cloud based business operating system designed to keep companies on the path to executing their key business priorities. Align is currently used by 800 companies across many industries, in over 64 countries, all working to scale their business and execute their plan.
Role
- Senior UI/UX Designer
- Lead Front-end Developer
Responsibilities
- UX Strategy
- Optimizing Task Patterns
- Usability Testing
- UI Design for Web App
- UI Design for iOS & Android App
- Front-end Development
- QAT Testing
Launched
2016
Challenge
Create the Align app re-design and move the user-experience from an outdated interface to a modern look that focuses on clarity and users completing actions. With this re-design our goal is to move Align closer to the looks of top tier companies in the team management space including: Jira, Basecamp, Asana, ActiveCollab, Mavenlink, Teamwork, Wrike and others. Through extensive design research and looking at the latest design trends we hope to distinguish Align from competitors and create an interface that invites users to create content.
Solution
Growth management software gets companies and their teams on the same page, so they stay focused on the things that matter. From the early in the planning stages I was involved in keeping our internal team focus on creating strong UX design patterns based on usability best practices. As the site continued development I designed all of the components, dashboards, and interfaces using Material Design principles as a primary reference point. Finally, I developed all of the front-end code onto the backend code, from all HTML structure to the CSS styling, including loading, transitions, and animation optimization.
Examining Competition
Align has many features that make it singularly unique, but studying established group management software for design inspiration revealed visual patterns we both liked and disliked. Visual deep-dive documents combined with a SWOT analysis of the competition greatly helped to inform our final design.
Iterating Early & Often
Working through early iterations of the design helped to uncover many aspects of the final design, one of the most important was the visual style, including iconography and UI color palette.
Better Business Habits Through UX Design
Growing businesses need good business habits – and habits can be hard to adopt. Well-designed and easy to use Software helps to push users to update information more often, in a consistent format, and with better accuracy.
By increasing the learnability of the app, you can quickly create power users who drive better group participation...
A Consistent Design Language
It is crucial in an app to create a system by which users know what to expect when they preform an action. By increasing the learnability of the app, you can quickly create power users who drive better group participation and develop a zealously evangelistic user base. Because it is a proven design system and has excellent documentation, Material Design was the perfect design language to use as a guide for a cohesive visual style.
Visualizing Data Sets
One of the most important aspects of Align is taking key performance indicators (KPIs) from across an entire organization and visualizing that data in a way that helps provide a snapshot management can use to help shape important decisions that keep a business aligned towards a common goal. The many dashboards throughout the app provide different ways of quickly creating, viewing, and manipulating data.
Early Side Sheets
A feature that greatly enhances editing data within the Align app on both desktop and mobile, is the prolific use of the side sheet modal design pattern with a scrim as an optional escape hatch to the close button. At the time of developing our UX patterns for the app in 2016, side sheets were still a very much underutilized design pattern. In fact, side sheets were not added to the Material Design spec until May 2018, the closest patterns defined at the time were probably either: full-screen dialog exception, bottom sheets, or navigation drawers. Although none of these fit our needs exactly, we worked using principles of Material Design to develop our editable panels.
Results
Align is currently used by 800 companies across many industries, in over 64 countries. The software continues to grow their user base and develop devoted followers who swear by their method.