VARB iPad app

A case study on creative strategy and design thinking.

In this case study, you’ll learn more about how I helped a software development firm simplify their design workflows, create a better product and increase sales for a multinational health supplement wholesaler.

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Old VARB home screen

The old home screen lacks design continuity and feels chaotic while offering little functionality.

The Old VARB had redundancies in the sales workflow and was hard to navigate.

The Virtual Account Record Book (VARB) was built by Digital Earth Networks (DEN) specifically for their client, Natures Plus.

The software was functional but it was hard to use. The user experience was feature rich but it was also unintuitive, redundant and difficult to navigate.

DEN pulled me in about a year into the VARB’s life cycle to help guide their redesign process.

This is when I discovered our first major barrier to success. The entire design process was taking place inside of Power Point.

Power Point can (and often is) used as a simple software mockup tool, but introducing their team to an application like InVision allowed me to streamline the entire prototyping and development efforts.

Not only that but it saved the client as much money on development as it cost them to hire me. Talk about a win!

Big logos are fine but leave them on the loading page. The home screen should be the base of operations for your entire app.

Problem #1

The home page is underutilized

There were 2 major issues with the old VARB home screen

  1. The logo and application name were taking up almost half of the page.
  2. The large buttons on the home screen did the same thing as the icons in the navigation menu at the bottom of the page.

It was apparent that the home screen was being underutilized and it would become the prime focus of my redesign efforts. We would examine the databases and determine the proper information architecture in order to make sure we put the most important data in the places that made it easiest to use.

Problem #2

The catalog page is cluttered and confusing

There were 2 major issues with the products page.

  1. The sorting options at the top of the screen are small, limited and hard to use.
  2. The products themselves are being overwhelmed by the add to cart buttons and they seem to be uncomfortably crammed on to the page.

This was a problem that was present throughout most of the application. Too much data smashed into too small a space. Something we would fix by airing out the new app design and giving all of the information a little more room to breathe.

The product catalog in the existing app is cluttered and visually distracting.

The Solution

Simplify the design, make the home page functional and air out the data tables.

The new design takes advantage of the full screen and puts everything the user needs within a click or two. We even added a notification ticker so that headquarters can send their sales reps messages in real time. We restructured the table data and their entire workflow in order to simplify the interface and make it the entire app more intuitive.

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Raymmar is a creative problem solver who helped shape the design direction for a vital piece of software that our firm developed for a large client in the health food industry.
I would recommend Raymmar to anyone who needs to solve complex software design problems and wants a unique eye with a flare for simple and clean interfaces.

  • Understand

    The first step was to talk to the users, developers, client and other pertinent team members. User testing and personalized surveys are always our first step. They allow us to understand where we are versus where we want to go.

  • Ideate

    After taking time to understand the clients desires and setting defined benchmarks for the new design, we set out to find inspiration, test various layouts, explore different color schemes, and began sketching out the new design.

  • Design

    Our design process is interactive. We use real time design collaboration tools to make sure we are headed in the right direction. Using rapid prototyping tools saves dollars on development as changes can be tested visually without a need for hard code.

  • Deliver

    We were just brought in to set the design direction and address the usability of the application, we turned the project back over to DEN’s in house development team after this part of the process for them to complete the software build.

This case study is a high level overview of the key issues we addressed during the VARB redesign. There were a number of other elements, design processes and creative insights that were delivered over the course of  working on this project. There was an overwhelming amount of data to parse and display for the end user and re-structuring the information architecture was a project all in itself and is maybe something we will cover in a later case study.

If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from my creative process and design thinking then reach out and let’s talk about your creative project.

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