Creating a first experience for Exact Online

Abstract

This report is part of Graduation course for the master Design for Interaction at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the Delft University of Technology. The project was done in cooperation with Exact, also in Delft. For this project, the interaction between the online bookkeeping application Exact Online and its users was analysed and redesigned, to improve the user experience of the first use. At the moment, a certain percentage of the people that try out Exact Online for free do not follow through with the purchase of a paid subscription. Some of the potential users are overwhelmed and confused by the many options that the program has to offer and are not sure where to start. The First Experience of Exact Online was analysed, to get an overall picture of where the user could experience problems. The main problems were: • The user was not guided during the first experience in a smooth process; it was fragmented and not always consistent. • Finding help could be troublesome, as there were many options and not all were easily found or were not up-to-date. • Communications from Exact were not always consistent or appropriate. Exact Online is mainly targeted at the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) market segment. To find out more about this type of the user, a contextual inquiry was set up. Seven (potential) users from the SME were interviewed about how they experienced bookkeeping in their daily life. A probe (booklet with assignments) was used in advance to prepare the participants, and to be used as a guide during the interviews. Using the probe helped the participants to share personal stories of their experiences, wishes and needs regarding their work and doing bookkeeping. The interviews were analysed and interesting quotes were grouped into themes. To present the results of the research, several visualisations were made. The visualisations act as a summary of the interviews and other materials. The themes and the participants profiles were presented in a graphical way. The visualisations were used as guidance for the concept phase. Combining the results, storyboards were created, using a combination of personas and scenarios. Illustrating the two different types of user which were found in the research, two fictive characters were created: • Mary-Anne Peterson works four days a week, many of her tasks involve bookkeeping. Her bookkeeping knowledge is on an expert level, her computer skills are average. Words to describe Mary-Ann would be: cautious, efficient, friendly, calm. • Paul Rossiter owns a small shop selling books. He spends an afternoon per week on bookkeeping. His bookkeeping knowledge is between novice and average, his computer skills are on a high level. Words to describe Paul would be: passionate, explorative, straightforward and impatient. A storyboard was made for each character, in which they try out Exact Online. To illustrate what kind of interaction Mary-Ann and Paul would like from the experience, Interaction Visions were formulated. The current first experience of Exact Online offers many options to a user, for instance the different types of subscriptions. During the first idea generation for a design concept, trying to design for all these options and at the same time trying to solve all indicated problems became too complicated. To regain focus and develop concepts which were targeting the most important goals, design boundaries were created. The design boundaries were to: • Use Paul’s Interaction Vision (“open and straightforward”) and storyboard • Start when the user enters Exact Online • Use demonstration data, without wizards • Consider only the first use A corresponding design goal was formulated: “To make the experience of the first use of Exact Online open and straightforward to a new user, offering appropriate guidance when needed and satisfying curiosity, resulting in the user being pleasantly surprised and confident about the suitability of the program” After a new idea generation, three concepts were formulated: • “Time machine”, illustrating that bookkeeping is a process in time, using an interactive time line • “Trusted Guide”, virtual experts guide and help the user through Exact Online, offering advice using collaborative filtering • “Start-up gadget”, a physical gadget which contains explanations on the first steps, using short code to interact with Exact Online The “Time machine” concept was chosen to be developed into a design proposal. In the concept, a time line symbolises a period in which an example company, a bicycle shop, does its business. The user can, amongst other things, enter some of the shop’s last sales and purchases. These are presented as “example events”, assignments which are placed along the time line. By using the slider along the time line, the user can see what kinds of events occur during a year. On overview pages, the user can use the slider to jump back and forth in time. They can decide which events they want to try out and see what happens in the overviews. During each event, the user gets an explanation of the company’s activities and the terms used. Links to more (help) information are provided. To test the concept’s interaction, a prototype was made. After test sessions with (potential) users, some alterations were made to the design. Even though the test participants understood the concept of the time line and event examples, the way the events were presented was improved. The Time machine design proposal offers a new approach to introducing users to Exact Online. The user is offered an appealing way to start exploring the trial subscription of the program, without requiring them to invest a large amount of time and effort.