Nostra: Professional Services Management SaaS

Overview
Strategy
Vision
Design System
User Feedback
Iteration
Market Feedback

Overview

Software built internally by Verys to manage their own agile software business. After 3 years of development we were ready to transform Nostra into a marketable SaaS product for small to mid-sized professional services business.

Product

Desktop web application designed for managers to plan projects and forecast the business. iOS/Android mobile app designed for employees to track time.

Team Composition

VP of Product
Senior UX Designer
Lead Software Engineer
Software Engineers

My Role

Led design in a cross-functional team working to ship startup resource allocation and forecasting product to professional services companies.

User Experience

Manage companies, projects, roles, and the employees that track time to roles. Forecast your business based on planned allocation versus actual tracked time of employees on projects.

Strategy

Nostra needed site reorganization, a new brand, and a vision for the future with an enhanced experience. The APIs powering the system were robust, but the interface and experience of using the product had huge potential for improvement.

Vision

After team discussions about future features and high-level direction of where the product could go, I distilled the highest impact ideas into interactive prototype concept. This concept lead to redesigning other screens with the same style to see how the application could feel holistically.

Left Cluttered dark themed interface lacking visual hierarchy.
Right Redesigned page with light design system, greater contrast for accessibility, and avatars to humanize the experience.

Project detail page with Timeline to get immediate sense of who is on the project, when they roll off, who is starting the project, and what roles still need to be assigned. Real-time financial health metrics on the right sidepanel gives immediate indication if the project is going well.

Project Role drawer gives details about the role including qualifications. Based on availability of employees and their qualifications, Fitscore matches them to roles.

Employees track time against their assigned roles for managers to track their hours. Hours logged are used for invoicing clients through a Quickbooks integration.

Design System

Since the interface was built from a React Material Design library we decided to structure our new design system in the same way to more easily map changes from old to new. After these global changes we would focus on the highest impact, most used pages first.

Color variables used for all elements of the Nostra design system.

Redesigned buttons using a structure that clearly maps from Material Design

Redesigned fields and inputs using a structure that clearly maps from Material Design

All small interface elements are defined as components for consistency throughout the interface.

Larger components are built from colors, typography, and smaller interface elements as seen above – this concept is known as Atomic Design

User Feedback

Building a tool to run your own business has the benefit of direct access to your users (aka. coworkers). Interviews and open channels of communication with our users helped us understand major painpoints. Weekly meetings are held where the Nostra is screenshared offering behavioral insights into how it’s used through observation.

User feedback was documented and prioritized in the backlog of tasks. Design work was prioritized based on what was entering development soon to ensure the highest quality implementation.

Iteration

New features and ongoing refinements were designed in Figma and demoed to users before development to gather  feedback. Once developed and in use, new feedback was gathered to further refine based on our previous iterations and assumptions.

Iterations of a side panel interface element that went through many stages of iteration after multiple conversations with engineers, business people, and users.

Market Feedback

Nostra was entering a level of polish and usability where it was ready to start acquiring customers. Based on feedback from sales people and customers new features and enhancements were designed to help win deals.