”I am very pleased with the outcome of the project. Based on the findings we can develop the usability of the portal even further. Several of the discovered findings have worried me for a long time and now all of the needs for change are stored in one document”, says Mari Airio, Industrial Design Manager at Valmet.
Valmet is committed to producing optimal solutions, tailored to the needs of each customer, in order to provide a flawless service experience. The Valmet Customer Portal is a cooperation platform created for that purpose, to serve Valmet and their customers. With the portal, customers can easily access Valmet’s digital services, as well as their network of specialists. To make using the portal as easy as possible, it is specifically tailored to the needs of each customer.
Providing the best user experience requires an extensive amount of research and expertise in the field of usability. Huld’s long experience in user-centered digital solutions and services persuaded Valmet to reach out to Huld in this matter.
Huld aided in assessing the usability of the customer portal. The project was implemented through heuristic evaluation done by two usability experts. The findings were reported and classified according to severity. As an end result, a comprehensive understanding of the development needs of the user interface was derived, as well as preliminary ideas on how to rectify the issues.
”I am very pleased with the outcome of the project. Based on the findings we can develop the usability of the portal even further. Several of the discovered findings have worried me for a long time and now all of the needs for change are stored in one document”, says Mari Airio, Industrial Design Manager at Valmet.
The portal is used by many stakeholders, each with their own interests. Factory managers, production workers, maintenance personnel and Valmet specialist teams, to name only a few. This is exactly why it is of the utmost importance that the system functions seamlessly from a usability point of view.
“I think the project went extremely well. After some challenges at the start of the project, the customer experience has been excellent. Huld has constantly kept us in the loop and informed us on what has been done and what will happen next. I feel confident in saying that we got what we asked for, and more”, continues Airio.
It was important for the success of the project to first establish an understanding of the customer service experience, i.e. understand how Valmet wants to serve their customers with the customer portal. Naturally, the work also required general knowledge of the heuristics of usability and the processes for implementing usability assessments.
In usability evaluations, it is important to identify several different levels of possible issues in respect to usability. For instance, it is a very different matter to identify the use of the wrong font size than it is to identify larger structural issues. This was partly helped by the division of the heuristic analysis into two separate roles: one with knowledge of the system and one so-called novice user.
“In this project, in addition to the findings, we also produced visual examples of how usability could be improved in different instances. This, in part, concretized the findings we made”, says Suvi Saari, Senior UX/UI Designer at Huld.