We are delighted to announce we have won the People’s Choice Award at the User Experience Awards 2015. Our Director of UX Séamus Byrne accepted the award at the UXies 2015 this evening, at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Séamus has been documenting the latest step of our award journey on Graphic Mint’s Facebook page and Twitter account.
Earlier this morning, Séamus presented a talk at the UX Awards conference on the behind-the-scenes of our winning project. It was proudly entitled, Storytelling, Visualisation and Empathy: The Keys to Successful UX for the Zarion Allocate Product. The three-person design team who began our journey to the 2015 UX Awards is composed of Eoghan Hickey, Julian Becerra and of course Séamus Byrne. In true Graphic Mint style, the team collaborated creatively to re-design and renovate the User Experience and User Interface of Zarion Software’s flagship product, Zarion Allocate.
UXIES 2015: GRAPHIC MINT PRESS RELEASE
Powerful Design
When asked to explain what the award means to Graphic Mint and himself, Séamus explained, “This is a stellar moment for Graphic Mint on the global User Experience design stage. Personally, it is also a dream come true. Eoghan Hickey, Julián Becerra and I worked very hard to design an easy-to-use and useful User Experience, as well as a state-of-the-art User Interface for the Zarion Allocate Software Product. A huge thank you to all the people who voted for us.”
He continued, “It is great to receive recognition with such a prestigious international award. The rising tide lifts all boats so this award not only helps our position us as UX thought leaders in Dublin, but also highlights the world-class quality of Irish Digital and User Experience Design. We are improving the lives of real people, one interaction at a time.”
“It’s been quite powerful in its effect of bringing that team together.” – Gerard Newman, CTO of Zarion Software
Séamus added, “Great User Experience is about being able to tell the story of the people who use the product, then visualising their storyworld with storyboards, ecosystem maps and product prototypes. It is vital to focus on one key principle based on a true understanding of the user, which forms the DNA of the design. On the Zarion Allocate project we zoomed in on one goal; to help genuinely connect the supervisor to their personnel. By simulating face-to-face interactions, we created an empathy between supervisors and personnel which humanised the product.”
Séamus’ Presentation Slides
Ux Awards2015 – graphic mintfrom Seamus Byrne
About the Award Winning Product
Zarion Software are an iconic Irish software company who celebrated their twentieth anniversary last week. They provide Software as a Service to the financial sector and the Zarion Allocate product is used by thousands of users, for work allocation and capacity management.
Graphic Mint took Zarion Allocate, a useful but outdated tool, and elevated it to an intelligent, relevant and modern standard. The new Zarion Allocate is a product which gives financial service professionals pleasure to interact with and rely on. The project consisted of three key stages; User Research, Framework Design and Detail Design. Our objective was to reach a level of user-centricity never before achieved in work allocation software.
About the Project Submission
When we began putting together our showcase for the project, we needed to visit the very start of what turned out to be a hugely important journey, not only for Zarion Allocate, but Graphic Mint too. We wanted to put together a simple video that could communicate all the thoughts and process that went into this game-changing UX renovation. We had our Content Strategist Katie McNeice create insightful questions for the team at Zarion Software, who have always been passionate about collaborating with us and discussing their experience of the product renovation.
With this combined knowledge and a few weeks of careful planning, we had our Digital Media Designer Eoin Smith shoot interviews with Gerard Newman, CTO & Founder, and Jason Cooke, Head of Product Management. Hearing the effects of our UX Design efforts not only on the product team, but their customers in turn, was a rewarding moment for all of us.
