What’s Agora?
Agora is a platform that allows European delegates to create official documents (text laws, Eu commission guidelines, etc.) to exchange with other delegates and official from Eu members as well. The tool helps them to prepare for upcoming meetings.
Also to search old documents for revisions.
WorkFlow ? compared to a classic app, this workflow is quiet complex because the European official jobs are complex. So a bad UX can make a quiet complex job a mess of complexity.
What was the situation ?
We worked in team (UI, UX, business analyst) to propose a POC (proof of concept) the first idea was to merge a unify design with the CRM Salesforce.
The goal was first to collect a maximum of data (focus group, UEQ – User Experience Questionnaire, idea shorting, creation of persona). We realized that the most important pain point was a system with cascading windows.
The current system allows users to expand, reduce, open and close cascading windows. In some case it can be useful like in any OS but this wasn’t compliant to any modern standard guidelines. If we wanted to migrate that design to an app or responsive design it wouldn’t be possible.
A major pain point was that there was not progressive disclosure. So it makes UX slow and brain power consuming.
Recommended solutions ?
It seemed essential to back to simplicity (see Occam’s razor).
With a dashboard more personalized (progressive disclosure) for each profile and less steps, less windows, less scrolling in long searches results looking for ” the right information” in a chaos non relevant informations. Make the user journey and must of tasks flows simpler and more consistent.
I used Sketch (+ Invision for collaboration between designers and Zeplin plugins for Integration) . I also try Adobe Xd which catch up it late on Sketch plugins ecosystem. The system was quite complex (see upper workflow) so we has still to show lot of informations.
The new interfaces therefore focus on the profile with customizable user interface and metadata . Using persuasive and gamification technics with color, icons and social networks. A kanban board with collaboration features allows the product to make more social interactions.
We quickly realized that the old version of Agora did not allow access on mobile and a significant amount of information would have been relevant to allow mobile access. We figure it out that the responsive design platform wouldn’t be enough.
In parallel to the Plateform redesign. We convinced our management (with are nice managers) to take decission to develop an app.
We could not put everything in the application but simply something which can manages the meetings, that allow delegates to move in the building ( give access to plans) , to find their documents related to each meeting and who will join the meeting.
UI Tools: Balsamic and Figma
Designing the App?
What was the purpose of creating a meeting app ?
Facilitate access to meetings, preparation and exchange before it.
This function should also be available on the Agora plateform because the European Council has an extrem diversity of profiles (younger to older) and all are not familiar with apps use as for business purposes.
