The world through NSoft designers' eyes

Who we are

NSoft has an in-house design team of 9 designers. We tend to hire ‘T’ shaped designers meaning that most of us have general knowledge across many different areas of design, but each one having his own strong area. UI and UX designers, interaction designers, graphic designers and illustrators work together with a common goal - to bring best possible product to our customers.

When people think of design, they mostly concentrate on our product’s visual identity. But that’s not all we do. Basically, what we want to accomplish is beautiful, functional design and a best possible user experience for our products.

Being a part of NSoft for 7 years now, I could say I grew up with the organization, and I have seen and shaped many different processes that make our Product Design team unique today.

It’s important to emphasize that we were lucky enough to have more than just a talented team but also the leaders that believe in the power of design. I talk a lot with designers from other companies and they really struggle to bring their vision and ideas to their top management, regardless of their work. The positive and validation oriented community improves our overall achievements allowing us to concentrate only on what we do best - design.

Design Processes

It really does look complicated when you read and learn about different processes of product compilation. Some of them have 5 and other go through 12 phases of product buildup. Some companies first tend to research, others start designing their product and make changes during the process, some of them first define problems they want to solve, etc. The point is what works for some company, most likely, will not work for yours. In order to make a functional process it is crucial to understand your clients and team possibilities.

Currently we combine different approaches dependant on request type. If the product is completely new - we begin with few concept designs aimed to help the team members to picture out the desired outcomes.

In case it’s necessary to update existing feature we use iterative design, conduct different research and analysis, and based on the results the changes are being made.

Collaboration is the Key

What I have learned is that many backend and frontend developers have great sense of product and UX. Despite the thought that designers have the best and most creative ideas, if you give the chance to other people to participate in the product design process you could be surprised with results. That is why we have adopted the flat hierarchy, meaning that anyone can have good ideas and every idea is valued equally.

Robert Pressman in his book “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach” said: “For every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product’s release.” So, clearly correcting the problem from the start is most cost effective. It can be done only if you involve people form different areas.

Biggest challenges

If you are lucky to know some passionate designer you will agree that designers are unique type of people. They all have their cutting edge ideas, their style and their unique mindset. Now, imagine 9 designers with too many ideas that try to make the same vision work, with same design elements and rules while the end result has to be uniform.

How we help our customers

The primary goal of any business is to increase its sales and consequently to build the brand value and reputation of the business.

The Product Design plays an essential role in achieving this goal by improving the user experience and customer satisfaction that helps to increase the number of users of the specific product.

Lifetime value depends upon the customer’s willingness to keep using your product. If you have a good UX design that does not frustrate the customer, they will more likely forgive you if other small issues arise.

Do you know how many users don’t use your product because they had trouble with registering? How many of them don’t know how to use your product at first sight? How long does it take to do something users want to do and can you make them do it more easily? Conversion rates depend highly on user’s ability to use the application easily.

We try to get familiar with our product users and research on what they expect from the product. That’s the reason we iterate regularly on existing products and improve experience for partners and their users.

Also, having the best product today doesn’t mean you can stop working on it. It’s necessary to research and always stay on alert. That’s the reason why we are always on top of new technologies, and among the first ones in our industry offering concepts for our products that include virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, face recognition etc. These products don’t necessarily bring us money, but they prove that we don't work in bubble and that we are ready for the future.

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