Devise Case Study: ISI LubeSoft Dashboard

Overview

Figure 1: Pre-existing UI concept

Integrated Services Incorporated (ISI) is an established company that offers an end-to-end software solution for operating quick lube shops. LubeSoft® provides networked point-of-sale interfaces and back-office systems for inventory and personnel management. ISI wanted to pursue a new rich internet application that would display real-time LubeSoft business metrics in the form of a car dashboard. ISI was already marketing this user interface concept at industry trade shows. Although customers liked the idea, there were lingering concerns that it lacked usability and didn't display the right metrics.

ISI engaged with Devise in order to meet three key project goals:

Understand customers’ needs and define a coherent vision for the LubeSoft Dashboard product.
Design an attractive and intuitive Dashboard user experience.
Provide a clear specification document in a short timeframe for their Agile development team.

This 21-day project with Devise involved User Research and Product Conception services with a short Detailed Design phase.

Figure 2: Devise services delivered to ISI

Understanding Customer Needs

The Devise team began with a User Research phase involving rapid ethnographic research at four quick lube shops, observing the activities of Store Managers and technicians as well as interviewing them about their needs and motivations. They were also surveyed to identify the most important LubeSoft metrics for the Dashboard. Devise analyzed their patterns of use, behaviors and responses to create a set of personas that represent archetypal users of the LubeSoft system. Devise collaborated with ISI to validate the persona set and target the right personas for the first release of the Dashboard system. The team selected Tom, the Store Manager, as the primary persona and Eddie, the Owner, as the secondary persona.

These are abbreviated persona descriptions of the Dashboard’s main target users:

Primary Persona	Secondary Persona
Tom Store Manager “Sometimes I’m so busy fighting alligators that I forget about draining the swamp.”	Eddie Owner “We have to stretch every penny.”
With 8 years of experience, Tom constantly puts out little fires. He works on the floor most of the day, and tries to be everywhere at the same time, although he prefers to act as greeter and cashier. Running the day-to-day quick lube operations is a combination of art & science. LubeSoft reports are an enormous help to Tom, but sometimes on the floor he just has to rely on his gut. There’s no formal store-to-store competition in their chain, although Tom talks occasionally by phone with the other managers to hear how their numbers look and gets quarterly reports from the Owner, Eddie.	Eddie bought his first lube shop 18 years ago and built his most recent quick lube shop three years ago. His business generally has been flat for the past three years. However, he’s an optimistic person and still creates monthly sales targets for his store managers with an assumption of seeing year-on-year increases. Eddie is eager to find ways to both reduce costs and increase revenue. Every morning, he anticipates LubeSoft’s E-Stats notifications about all of his store openings that come in on his BlackBerry. Eddie spends a lot of time studying the various end-of-day reports sent to him by his store managers, and thinks long and hard before making any significant change to business procedures.
Tom’s Goals: Keep the cars coming. Reduce labor percentages without sacrificing customer service. Meet or exceed last year’s numbers for this month.	Eddie’s Goals: Maintain steady growth. Help managers fine-tune store performance. Find time for fly-fishing.

Primary Persona

Secondary Persona

Tom

Store Manager

“Sometimes I’m so busy fighting alligators that I forget about draining the swamp.”

Eddie

Owner

“We have to stretch every penny.”

With 8 years of experience, Tom constantly puts out little fires. He works on the floor most of the day, and tries to be everywhere at the same time, although he prefers to act as greeter and cashier.

Running the day-to-day quick lube operations is a combination of art & science. LubeSoft reports are an enormous help to Tom, but sometimes on the floor he just has to rely on his gut. There’s no formal store-to-store competition in their chain, although Tom talks occasionally by phone with the other managers to hear how their numbers look and gets quarterly reports from the Owner, Eddie.

Eddie bought his first lube shop 18 years ago and built his most recent quick lube shop three years ago. His business generally has been flat for the past three years. However, he’s an optimistic person and still creates monthly sales targets for his store managers with an assumption of seeing year-on-year increases.

Eddie is eager to find ways to both reduce costs and increase revenue. Every morning, he anticipates LubeSoft’s E-Stats notifications about all of his store openings that come in on his BlackBerry. Eddie spends a lot of time studying the various end-of-day reports sent to him by his store managers, and thinks long and hard before making any significant change to business procedures.

Tom’s Goals:

Keep the cars coming.
Reduce labor percentages without sacrificing customer service.
Meet or exceed last year’s numbers for this month.

Eddie’s Goals:

Maintain steady growth.
Help managers fine-tune store performance.
Find time for fly-fishing.

Figure 3: LubeSoft target user personas

Designing an Attractive User Experience

The Devise team then applied a scenario-based approach to conceive a coherent and usable product design that incorporated the existing UI concept as a starting point. The car dashboard is an appropriate visual metaphor for the quick lube environment, but Devise deeply re-examined the underlying requirements and feature behaviors to ensure the system would be usable. The Dashboard involved extensive information design, both to identify the appropriate set of data elements to display for Tom and Eddie and also to visualize those data in an intuitive and attractive fashion. Bar graphs and spark-lines along with modernized gauges provide detailed perspective on current performance vs. historical trends.

These are some mockups illustrating features of the ISI LubeSoft Dashboard:

LubeSoft Dashboard GUI
Figure 4: The home-page Store tab combines gauges for four key metrics along with bar charts that reflect current vs. historical performance. Branding is given prominent real-estate, and legends enhance usability.	Figure 5: The Sales tab displays performance targets for selling quick lube products and services using an efficient list format that includes graphical spark-lines for at-a-glance status.
Figure 6: The Team tab shows four key performance metrics for each employee on the clock. This screen also shows the Traffic & Weather drawer; weather is of perennial concern to quick lube shops as it influences car count.	Figure 7: The Chain tab is designed for Eddie to assess the relative performance of all the quick lube stores he owns in his chain. He can call up any of the metrics in the LubeSoft Dashboard system for store-to-store comparison.

Devise clarified the nature of LubeSoft metrics by visually differentiating performance targets, which are sales levels the store is trying to reach, from warning thresholds, which are operating levels the store is trying to avoid. Performance targets are represented as green patterned regions and warning thresholds as red bars. Using different graphical styles for these metrics avoids usability problems associated with red-green color blindness, a vision deficiency affecting about 8% of caucasian males. To further support usability for busy quick lube managers and technicians, mouse use is minimized or eliminated through keyboard shortcuts, and the system automatically launches and refreshes itself.

Delivering Quickly

The Devise team worked quickly to identify customer needs and create a compelling interaction framework. The framework was validated internally by ISI business stakeholders and deemed feasible by ISI technical leads before any specifications were finalized. Devise then promptly delivered a detailed Form & Behavior Specification that clearly defined system functionality as well as providing visual design details and comprehensive analysis of Dashboard data elements. The specification also documented quick lube customer research and LubeSoft personas for posterity. ISI’s growing Agile team has found ongoing utility in referencing this rich yet lightweight documentation.

Summary

Devise delivered on all of ISI’s project goals. The Devise team rapidly conceived a deep and broad product vision that acts on insights about LubeSoft customers and is both friendly and usable. The solutions documented by Devise also have provided ISI with months of feature development beyond the initial launch. Devise continues to support ISI with visual design as their sales team fields intense interest from both existing and potential customers for the attractive LubeSoft Dashboard product.

Devise provides product design consulting services, including customer research, interaction design and software engineering. We can be reached at 503-292-5191 or by email. Let’s Devise!