Mobiera

Problem

When I joined Mobiera, a company with 80 to 100 employees, I had a meeting with the CEO, Fabrice Rochette, to discuss the problem they were trying to solve. Fabrice had developed a suite of software solutions for telecommunication companies in emerging countries, where they struggled to locate, target, centralize, and organize information, among other challenges. The suite worked remarkably well, and the clients were satisfied, except for one significant issue: the interfaces of each product were not intuitive enough for the clients to use on their own. As a result, the company had to hire in-house personnel to operate the software instead of allowing the clients to use it directly. This unnecessary burden hindered the overall customer experience.

Solution

Once I understood the problem that needed to be solved, it was time to begin addressing it. I worked directly with the CEO, which was an interesting experience where I had to evangelize the design thinking process and create a team. The first thing I did was thoroughly understand and study the software from top to bottom, which was complex due to its specific nature within the telecommunications industry. Next, I conducted interviews with sales executives, as well as Fabrice himself, to grasp the business objectives. Thanks to having in-house personnel using the product on behalf of the clients, I was able to interview them to understand how users interacted with the product and the challenges they faced in their specific environment. Additionally, I interviewed the developers to gain insights from their perspective.

After gathering all this information, I reached the conclusion that the user experience could be improved by creating a comprehensive design system that unified the suite and made the processes clear for the clients. This way, they would be able to use the product on their own. Initially, the work process followed a waterfall format with Fabrice to ensure clarity and address each product individually, one by one. After some time of finalizing this phase, we transitioned to an agile methodology. During this stage, I had to build the design system team, hiring front-end developers, Figma experts, and studying the challenges of a design system. Then, with the team, we started creating the system with components, names, tokens, and documentation. We also developed cohesive brand identities and user experience flows. Prototypes were created and reviewed by Fabrice, and we began testing them with the in-house workers to identify what worked and what didn't.

After another year of hard work, we implemented all the research and prototyping into the product, resulting in a more intuitive and user-friendly suite of software.

Shipping and final thoughts

After witnessing the product in action with the new interfaces and flows, the people in the company were impressed by the significant change. Unfortunately, the employees who were hired to use the suite on behalf of the clients had to be let go, as the clients could now use the product on their own. The customers had a tremendous reception to the changes since the flows and interfaces had become so intuitive. Following this, I had a profound personal realization, seeing how the problem was successfully solved, leading to increased customer loyalty and opening up new avenues for selling more thanks to an improved product.

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It is important to emphasize that the effort was a team collaboration, and I had to learn a great deal about design systems, not just design thinking processes. Additionally, I utilized a mix of methodologies, combining waterfall and agile approaches. The constant learning and industry updates made the work quite challenging. For example, we initially started by creating a library of components, but later, for documentation purposes, we ended up building an entire system that is continuously updated for designers and developers.

My role primarily focused on the UI part, where I created components and flows to enhance the overall user experience and interface. Design is all about communication, and my job is to communicate the product solution in an intuitive and effective manner.

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