How UX design boosts user productivity

Until you understand how UX design really works, you may fail to appreciate how profoundly it affects your clients' productivity and bottom line.

For example:

• A car shop can process 20% more vehicles per day with this wheel calibration device because of the improved GUI;
• Engineers take 20% less time to test AV installations because of the improved user experience of this electronic device;
• We halved the incidence of queues in petrol stations by improving the usability of the POS interface.

UX design gets to the root of poor performance

Making a GUI work for the user is a deliberate process. To understand users and their environment alongside the tech, meticulous research is necessary.

We apply cognitive science principles and research techniques to identify bottlenecks within workflows and the substantive factors that lead to poor performance. For example:

• where people get stuck because of a strange user flow;
• why certain mistakes have a knock-on effect and how to break the chain;
• why mistakes occur in the first place;
• how tiredness affects the user’s performance;
• where a slow response from the hardware elicits frustration.

Example of how productivity factors are assessed in a medical GUI.

UX design solutions that increase productivity

We create design patterns that reduce the cognitive effort required to use the device. We focus on the difficult parts of a user’s job and improve them one by one. We achieve this by:

• supporting automatic response patterns or habits;
• using familiar interaction patterns;
• developing a clear visual hierarchy;
• deliberately integrating productivity hacks;
• creating discoverable shortcuts;
• guiding visual processing to reduce cognitive load.

Good UX goes beyond productivity

The benefits of sound UX don’t just improve productivity. They also cut training costs, reduce errors, and make the product more accessible to new types of users.

When UX improves a product, it also supports the efforts of the sales team by making the quality of the device visible and credible. This helps overcome sales barriers and positions the product as a market leader.

Creative Navy is the leading GUI design boutique in Europe. With offices in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, they have over a decade of design experience.