QAD Scaling A Company Wide UX Program
Company Overview
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QAD is a leading provider of enterprise resource planning, ERP applications for global manufacturing companies. With a strong customer base in mid-market automotive, consumer products, electronics, food and beverage, industrial and medical products. QAD has customers in over 100 countries around the world.
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Challenges ​
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No UX maturity, tools or practice in place
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Team development plans included training Business Analysts
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What I Did
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I was brought in to start the usability practices for the company developed and piloted a new usability initiative. controlling all facets of the user experience far QAD clients/customers.
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Strategy & Innovation
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Integrating & Institutionalizing UX
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UX Assessment & Research
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Integrated User Centered Design in the Development Process
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I worked across all products and teams, reporting to the Director of Research Development
Creating Impact
“Many of our customers need help, and that's what we've focused on in QAD 2010 - better usability, more access to data, and faster deployment.”
Pamela Lopker, president and founder of QAD
Strategy & Innovation
Changing a successful product from it's current but outdated state isn't an easy challenge but doing it on a global scale across 7 verticals isn't any easier. QAD's products were just evolving from green screens and so the strategy far adapting new UCD practices had to include a strong plan for innovation
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Integrating & Institutionalizing
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User Centered Design initiative succeed when integration and institutionalization into the company is in place has taken place. Tools like UI Guidelines and Standards and Personas help facilitate the change.
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Assessment & Research
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I facilitated persona development, task analysis and usability testing providing the teams with better information for creating new screens that would better support users needs.
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User Centered Design
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I worked with all the product teams to find user centered design solutions for all of the different products ranging from CRM, Production scheduling and planning, financials. configurator, reporting etc. My role was that of Information Architect, Interaction Designer and User Researcher.
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• Provided global company usability training
• Establish UI Guidelines & Standards
• Conducted customer and user outreach via conferences, site visits, surveys etc
• Design lead for key and new projects
