This is the story of how I transformed the daily grind for decision-makers with Owais Afaq, Partner & CEO of Optimyse.
I was responsible for designing the product from start to finish. Worked alongside a junior UI/UX designer and collaborated directly with stakeholders to ensure the comprehensive delivery of the final product.
No CEO wants to go into JIRA to understand what is happening in their Product Development. They want answers. Simple ones.
The challenge was to craft a solution for those busy decision-makers who want to get meaningful insights from their product development team to make better business decisions.
The main goal with Optimyse was not to create just another project management tool. Instead, it was to create something that would seamlessly integrate with existing tools while meeting the unique needs of the users.
This challenge ignited my passion and provided me with an opportunity to create something truly impactful and meaningful.
My product strategy was heavily influenced by Stephen Anderson's UX Hierarchy of Needs.
Ensure that Optimyse addresses the specific pain points and preferences of its target audience, facilitating quick decision-making and enhancing productivity.
Stand out in the mature and competitive market by emphasizing meaningful differentiation rather than engaging in a feature parity war.
Seize the opportunity to go beyond conventional functionality and create a product that truly adds value to the lives and workflows of its users.
During the discovery phase, I focused on understanding the project goals. I analyzed other similar apps, studied JIRA from the perspective of the targeted users and conducted interviews with decision-makers within and from different companies to learn about their needs, behaviors, and challenges.
Based on the research, I created user personas to represent the target audience, highlighting their distinct needs, goals, and challenges. I also made sure that the ideas were technically feasible.
Throughout the project, user personas helped me to make design choices, set priorities and understand the users better.
By knowing exactly who I was designing for, I could consider how the app would fit into the users' lives. I imagined ideal experiences and behaviors of our personas rather than specific interfaces, technologies, or business goals.
This helped me to have further empathy with our users and allowed me to work more fluidly and explore concepts that I could easily communicate with the team and stakeholders.
I kept the scenarios at a high level, which formed the backbone of the requirements and allowed me to express them from both a functional and emotional perspective.
With a clear understanding of the user's perspective, I began defining the structure with a top-down approach. I spent a lot of time brainstorming and sketching various ideas for arranging the UI elements, functionality, and data.
Starting with a broad vision, I gradually began to see something more concrete taking shape. I worked on creating a design language, interactions, and the app's structure to bring the vision to life.
With the wireframes in place, I moved on to crafting the visual design of Optimyse. My primary objective was to create a user-friendly and efficient tool for the end-user.
Ensure that Optimyse addresses the specific pain points and preferences of its target audience, facilitating quick decision-making and enhancing productivity.
The dashboard screen displays meaningful insights fetched from JIRA, allowing users to quickly assess the essential product and team updates. The design uses a card-based layout that can be re-ordered based on user priorities, allowing for scalability in future releases.
Additional screens show deeper insights in a clean and simple format. Users can monitor individual and team performance and efficiency and track deadlines and estimates.
Hameed brought our vision for Optimyse to life! creating a simple interface from complex requirements was incredibly valuable. With great attention to detail and a user-centric approach, he designed our product to perfectly meet our users' needs. Highly recommend!
