What’s Agora?
Agora is a platform that allows European delegates to create official documents (text laws, Eu commission guidelines, etc.) to exchange with other delegates and official from Eu members as well. The tool helps them to prepare for upcoming meetings.
Also to search old documents for revisions.
WorkFlow ? compared to a classic app, this workflow is quiet complex because the European official jobs are complex. So a bad UX can make a quiet complex job a mess of complexity.
What was the situation ?
We worked in binomial with an UI and an UX (me).
The goal was first to collect a maximum of data (focus group, UEQ – User Experience Questionnaire, idea shorting, creation of persona).
We realized that the most important pain point was a system with cascading windows.
A kind of OS where you can expand, reduce, open and close cascading windows as a old fashion way.
A sort of system exploiting the problem is that this system runs on a web version which already involved slow user experience as well as display.e
Recommended solutions ?
It seemed essential to back to simplicity.
With a dashboard more personalized for each profile and less steps, less windows, less scrolling and less looking for ” the right information” in a chaos non relevant informations.
I used Sketch (+ Invision for prototyping and Zeplin plugins for Integration) and Adobe creative cloud product. The system was quite complex (see workflow) so we has still to show lot of information.
The new interfaces therefore focus on the profile with customizable user interface and metadata . Using gamification technics with color , icons and social networks. Also the system will allow social network interactions without going too far that’s way.
We quickly realized that the old version of Agora did not allow access on mobile and a significant amount of information would have been relevant to allow mobile access. We figure it out that the responsive design platform wouldn’t be enough.
In parallel to the Plateform redesign. We convinced our management (with are nice managers) to take decission to develop an app.
We could not put everything in the application but simply something which can manages the meetings, that allow delegates to move in the building ( give access to plans) , to find their documents related to each meeting and who will join the meeting.d
Designing the App ?
What was the purpose of creating a meeting app ?
Facilitate access to meetings, preparation and exchange before it.
This function should also be available on the Agora plateform because the European Council has an extrem diversity of profiles (younger to older) and all are not familiar with apps use as for business purposes.