Delivering effective enterprise software platforms for our clients has always been central to SMLWRLD and its purpose. To achieve this goal, we follow four core principles inspired by functional design, that lay the foundation when developing our products and ensuring success in our design process.

Our principles are…

1. User-Focused

Developing an understanding of our platform’s audience, their needs and problems is an important building block when creating a product that is both highly usable and accessible.

To create the best user experience, we employ various research methods such as stakeholder interviews, surveys, workshops, prototyping etc., to gather the information that will allow us to create a platform experience tailored to an organisation’s needs.

At SMLWRLD, we believe every action performed by a user on our platforms should be a seamless journey with no hurdles to jump.

2. Usable

SMLWRLD continually works on making our software platforms usable for our clients, not just during the design and development phase but throughout the life cycle of the platform. To ensure tasks are performed in an accurate and efficient manner, we gather feedback early on from users to determine any areas where problems are occurring, e.g. searching for an article, uploading a document, updating profile contact details.

3. Accessible

We recognise that people with disabilities may interact with our platforms in different ways, and we deploy various tools to assist them. Making our platforms inclusive for all people, and removing barriers, can help an organisation’s internal engagement and collaboration.

Some of the ways we incorporate accessibility in our platforms are:

• Making webpage HTML markup easy to access for assistive technologies such as screen readers that can read on-page text content out loud.
• Provide users with the ability to add alternative text for imagery that may not be viewable for visually impaired people.
• Ensure adequate contrast between text and non-text elements, making it easier for users to differentiate between them. We follow recommendations provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and use a colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1.

4. Engaging

Browsing a staff intranet or managing digital assets shouldn’t be a bland and boring experience. A software platform with aesthetic visual appeal will engage users more, improving the adoption of the platform within their own workflow, and ensuring it is an important contributor to their organisation’s productivity and output.

We take into consideration the tone of voice for the client’s business and the demographic of the employees to make impactful design decisions. This will help ensure that certain tasks that users may want to perform are clear and concise without any ambiguity.

When designing the platforms we look to incorporate the visual language of our clients’ branding, and create an identity that is not only engaging and effective, but also gives a sense of ownership of the platform. Compare this to a user interface (UI) that has generic branding, with the audience having a disconnected relationship with the tool.