How we designed for the less-techy construction industry?
Construction is one of the least digitised industries, but now it is under the limelight of tech companies that are trying to solve its problems. As a part this revolution, we made an innovative product which solved their key problem, delay!
As a Product Designer at Lean Station for 3 years, I learned about the interesting user base and their unique challenges. Many of them have been solving problems conventionally for decades, so converting to a digital platform is not an easy task. I am here to share some of the learnings I got from my experience to help the other designers building solutions on the same industry.
1. Present as much as possible data
Users prefer to have all relevant information available to them at once, without having to navigate through different sections of the app or website. This can be challenging for designers to accommodate, as too much information on a single screen can lead to clutter and confusion.
2. Make it accessible for senior adults
Construction industry may include a significant percentage of previous generation and older adults, who may have different preferences and needs when it comes to using digital products. This is an important factor to consider while designing interface and interactions.
This majority is used to ERP like interfaces. Designers shouldn’t be spending effort on making product modern. For example, in choosing a colour scheme. It’s recommended to keep the primary colour common and intense. Light and dull colour schemes for making the app look cool will fail in accessibility testing for this user base.
It is also important to keep the primary and secondary very distinctive. So user knows conceives the idea of secondary actions.
Drag, Swipe, Pinch such interactions are harder for these users.Better not to go beyond conventional interactions like click, right click and Double click.
3. Don’t rely on icon only CTA
Icon only actions/buttons could be confusing for the users, particularly for the age set we are dealing with.
Users may have differing interpretations of the meaning of icons, both from their intended meaning and from other users’ interpretations.
This applies to Navbar as well. User cannot remember the menu items even through collapsed bar with icons listed. It’s better to keep navigations on top or keep left nav bar expanded by default.
4. Make regular update entry quicker
Construction users update their progress on regular basis. These updates could be tiring and time consuming. Design should ensure users don’t have to hunt the pending updates, it should be upfront and quick to update.
Missing a single progress update can lead to lot of dependencies issues.
- Pre-fill information and focus the field needs the change
- Automate routine updates on manual single-click verification.
- Keep the fields minimal by asking only necessary information
5. Messages with non-blaming tone
This industry has a reputation for a “blame game” culture, which can be detrimental to the success of a product. When users feel like they are being blamed for a problem, they are less likely to continue using the product. It is because they are afraid of potentially being blamed for any negative outcomes.
To improve the situation, it is important for design to ensure that the next step is focused on resolving the negative outcome. Additionally, UX copy should use a reassuring tone that acknowledges the issue as normal and encourages users to move forward.
Conclusion
This user base is not less tech savvy in their personal life which is an advantage for the product owners and all those users need is a product which understands them deeper and mimic the real world solution within it.
And above points are not rules, but rather best practices based on the research we have conducted. However, these practices may differ depending on various factors.
For example, we primarily operated in Singapore and then entered the Indian market, where our audience wanted to solve a completely different problem. Instead of reducing the delay, which was our key value proposition, it was all about cost and budgets.
In the next article, we will discuss the problems we faced when attempting to apply an idea to a different geography.
