As someone who works daily with improving the user experience (UX) of digital products, I can safely say that Novacura is a company that truly embraces the importance of great UX. At the very core of Novacura is an idea to improve the lives of users that are weighed down by tiresome, time-costly processes. Our Flow Platform provides applications that are tailored to the users’ needs, simplifying the so often monstrous user interfaces of today’s ERPs. That’s what I call a UX-centered company!
Having that said, we know that the UX in our products is not perfect. We can definitely improve—and that’s what we’ve done! The new Flow Portal 2 is a perfect example. To make this point even clearer, let’s go through some of the biggest UX improvements that we’ve made.
Like playing with Lego
When creating a dashboard, there’s a lot of back and forth regarding layout. Especially at the beginning of development. Should the KPIs be at the top of the screen or in a column to the left? Should the tables be placed next to each other, or is it best to have them in different tabs?
Finding the best layout and page navigation is hard and requires a lot of testing. In Flow Portal 2, we aimed for a very hands-on solution to this problem. Now, an admin user can directly interact with the layout of the page. Items can be picked up and resized similar to a window on your desktop. Building a new portal should be fun, like playing with Lego!
Centralized configuration
In Flow Portal 2, you can make changes and see those be applied without having to leave the configuration page! We’ve achieved this by moving the configuration to the “edit-panel”, which remains open until you’re done editing. Through this panel, you do all your configuration: add new pages, change navigation, add portlets, you name it! By centralizing configuration to a single panel, we can make room for what’s actually important—your portal!
Optimized for efficiency
Everything has become more accessible, from the way you export content to the way you structure your pages. Compared to the old Portal, the number of necessary steps to perform a task has been significantly decreased. Do you want to export a table? That’s one click away. Want to create a new chart? Only two clicks away!
By grouping actions and making use of the new “edit-panel”, we’ve managed to make more actions directly accessible to the user without cluttering the interface.
The release of Flow Portal 2 represents the start of a new “UX-first” approach at Novacura. We know that people value great user experiences, not only in their everyday apps but also in their business processes. That’s good! People should expect nothing less! But we must be ready to face these new demands. That’s why we’re investing more in UX now than ever before, and I think the Flow Portal 2 is a testament to that.
Looking ahead, there’s even more exciting stuff waiting to be announced! The wind of UX change is blowing. I’m excited. I hope you are too!
