UX Design | User Experience & Innovation services | Bluestonex

User Experience & Innovation Services

OVERVIEW

Digital Transformation

SAP FIori, UI5 Apps, Slipstream UI5 Apps

Customer Experience

Design thinking, Prototyping, Surveys

Platform Management

IAAS (PMC), EPAAS, Machine learning / AI, Intergration services

Application Development

SAP & Non SAP Apps, Custom & standard, Process/UX Review, Enterprise mobile development

Bluestonex's UX & Innovation services range from application design and build, all the way to UX Health diagnosis and digital insight services. Read more below and what we can offer you today!

Application design & build services

Bluestonex's offers a complete service for application development. We specialise in the full end to end process starting at the workshop stage and progressing all the way through to build, deployment and support.

Workshops
Design thinking workshops both on-site and remote, following the SAP AppHaus methodology. Frame the problem, come up with ideas, turn those ideas in rapid prototypes and iterate those designs until a final build blueprint is ready.

The Technologies
Decide which technology is the best fit for your problem. We work with multiple technologies that transform your user experience. These include SAP Fiori, broken down into SAP Slipstream and SAP UI5 applications, as well as utilising technologies such as HANA DB & other SAP Business Technology Platform services to deliver applications separate from SAP back end systems.

The Build
With a diverse team of designers, UI and oData analysts, we deliver applications built with the utmost expertise from every angle.

Usability / User Testing
Usability Testing or User Testing is the process of identifying end users usage patterns. In this process we help you evaluate a product or new idea on its end users. Usability can be measured by 5 quality components namely Learnability, Efficiency, Errors, Memorability and Satisfaction.

Usability testing needs to consider the target user and the user environment. We always recommend to test apps in an environment as close to the environment they will be using in real life situations to ensure an accurate representation of how the user would react.

Our usability testing lab is on the forefront of technology and innovation. Using technologies such as eye-tracking and facial cameras to track a users exact expressions and navigation when using an app. Heat maps and charts provided from eye tracking software shows us exactly where the users eyes were first drawn to which provides helpful information such as whether the important buttons on the screen stand out enough. This used in harmony with face cameras allow us to see if a user (for example) displays a confused expression and exactly what part of the screen they were looking at when this happened.

Workshop and prototyping tools

Bluestonex are a trained facilitator in the Lego Serious Play methodology.

We use Lego Serious Play (LSP) in problem solving. LSP can be used as a powerful tool to enhance innovation and business performance. We often use this method to transform insight and awareness into commitment and shared goals. This tool can be run face2face or remotely and can range from 1-2 and up to 8 hour workshops.

Team Building

Lego Serious Play was formulated to increase empathy and understanding between participants, foster collaboration, and create a safe environment to tackle challenges. This means that it can help bind new teams together, resolve conflicts within a group or department, and create substantially higher-performing teams.

Innovation

A ‘hands-on, minds-on’ process such as Lego Serious Play activates new parts of the brain and encourages creativity and new thinking. It also ensures that, unlike traditional team-building exercises, everyone feels heard and everyone’s ideas are shared. Thereby harnessing the innovation potential of your entire team.

Strategy

Modelling complex ideas through Lego helps people articulate and discuss thoughts that may not be easy to express purely verbally. Importantly, it is a problem-solving process. So the focus is always on ‘how can we make this work,’ not ‘that will never work because…’

Other UX tools

Mural
Mural is an tool that allows colaborative brainstorming and design thinking via the use of real time virtual whiteboards. Add sticky notes, images and drawings to a live workspace that other people can work on alongside you. Mural is our go to tool when it comes to remote design thinking workshops.

Adobe Photoshop
We use Photoshop by Adobe to create our high fidelity prototypes that we then load into Invision to turn into moving protoypes for the user to play with. Photoshop allows us to create prototypes that look exactly like the real thing.

SAP Web IDE & SAP Business Application Studio
We use actual IDEs such as SAP Web IDE and SAP Business Application Studio to develop high fidelity prototypes. The fact they are actual development platforms and not dedicated prototyping tools means we can create mock-ups that will look exactly like the real thing and also give a head start on the build process.

Invision
Invision is a tool that allows us to load up low fidelity hand drawn prototypes, or high fidelity prototypes created in Photoshop, and create navigation hotspots and add animation to the images to give companies an idea on how the application will work and the benefits it will bring.

SAP Build
Build is a prototyping/wireframing tool provided by SAP. With Build you can create wireframe prototypes using real SAP Fiori controls and load in test/mock data. We use Build when we want to provide customer with a moving prototype that interacts with data.

Pen and paper
You can't beat good old pen and paper when it comes to rapid prototyping. Sketch up ideas there and then in the workshop and create visualisation of ideas in minutes. We can load photos of these drawings into invision to turn them into interactable prototypes.

Microsoft Teams
Microsoft teams is the obvious choice when it comes to remote communication. We utilise Teams to run our remote design thinking workshops.

The Technologies

SAP UI5 is what most people know as SAP Fiori.

SAP Fiori is actually a set of design principles laid out by SAP, and SAP UI5 is the technology behind the scenes.
We build custom UI5 applications for clients and follow the SAP Fiori guidelines when doing so.
The 5 in UI5 stands for HTML5, which is the main code language used for the screen elements. Using this allows all our UI5 applications to be completely responsive and work/adapt across all device types, whether it be a desktop monitor, a tablet/mobile and even older small RF devices used in warehouses.

UI5 applications can be used for almost anything, whether it be a simple app connected to data in an SAP back end system, or a standalone app utilising API's or external databases such as the SAP HANA DB.

SAP Screen Personas / Slipstream

SAP Screen Personas/Slipstream is a free add-on that exists in your back end ECC or S/4 HANA system.

SAP Screen Personas/Slipstream allows you to take your existing SAP GUI transactions, render them in the browser, and give you the ability to hide, move and add elements of the transaction on a new layer ontop of the original. Allowing you to simply and improve standard GUI transactions without actually changing the original.

SAP Slipstream, part of the Screen Personas product, allows you to render your customised screens in the same language as a UI5 application.
This allows the screens to adapt to different devices the same as what a UI5 app would.
We design our screens with the Fiori guidelines, meaning that our Slipstream/Screen Personas apps are also considered SAP Fiori apps. Users can not tell if they are using a UI5 app or a Slipstream app!
SAP Screen personas/Slipstream allows companies to achieve that sought after "Fiori" experience, without the need for large, expensive UI5 applications.
If the logic you desire already exists in your back end system, why create a completely new app when you can just simplify and give the original a facelift!

The SAP AppHaus Network

Building upon a history of creative environments, the SAP AppHaus Network is a selection of “customer facing” co-innovation spaces in which customers, SAP, and end-users collaboratively work on projects by putting humans and their experiences first.

Bluestonex are a proud member of SAP App Haus network. We are one of two locations in the United Kingdom and part of the global network.

Based in a beautiful renovated old church, our ground floor space has offices and conference rooms whilst our first floor design centre boasts a large open space that combines the styling of the old with a touch of the new. Bringing everything together into one amazing, collaborative design workspace where creativity flows!

Click here to open a virtual 3D tour of our office!

The Methodology of UX

People centric

Personal Interaction with partner, customers, and end-users

Design driven

Focus on creative collaboration

Authentic

Outputs are real solutions for real problems

Visionary

New way to collaborate with customers

Networked

Building a network of creative spaces in the SAP ecosystem

Value generating

Building trusted long-term relationships with customers

The UX Design Process

Explore innovation opportunities

Discover and gain deep understanding of customers’ and their end users’ needs

Design and create a prototype of the solution.

Deliver functional solutions for productive use.

Run and Scale the solution, and deploy across the company.

User Experience Health with Bluestonex

Know what the end users think about the current business applications they use for their work. Measure the state of current user experience from a quick Qualtrics survey and see the results in an insightful analytical dashboard. Know the ways by which the user experience can be improved. And give your users more humanised applications, not just any tool to complete their work.

Qualtrics is an experience management web based tool to conduct survey and analyse the response. It is very easy to use software and comes with a variety of templates for survey and dashboards. It has built-in dynamic reporting tools.

Video feedback brings consumers’ thoughts and feelings to life by empowering respondents to describe their experience in their own words. Qualtrics’ sophisticated machine learning captures and analyzes what was said to provide deeper insights.

Video Feedback automatically translates and transcribes audio, saving researchers time and speeding up action. Additionally, sophisticated text analytics built directly into the product enable researchers to quickly surface themes from video responses, analyze them to highlight the most important responses, and set up automated alerts to prompt action.

Marketing, CX and HR teams will be able to use Video Feedback to integrate richer insights into their feedback programs.

Call Us

01691 880223

E-mail Us

enquiries@bluestonex.com

Visit Us

The Church, Market Gate, Salop Rd, Shropshire SY11 2NR