TL;DR
Here are the high-level outcomes of my work on QMetry:
- Standardized QMetry’s primary workflows (v6) to improve onboarding, usability, and cross-platform integrations (e.g. JIRA)
- Conducted competitive analysis, usability testing, and rapid prototyping to identify and resolve key UX issues
- Designed interactive data visualizations and onboarding content to lower cognitive load and boost user productivity
- Successfully launched QMetry 6 with strong customer adoption and alignment to future product roadmap
For more details and the nitty-gritty process, read on…
Background
QMetry is an enterprise test management platform. It started as a standalone tool to help QA teams manage manual testing, then expanded to support test automation and enterprise-scale quality management. It offers deep integrations with tools like Jira, Selenium, Jenkins, and CI/CD pipelines.
Problem
QMetry is designed to be able to test literally anything. The main challenge was standardizing the primary flows and helping onboard new users. This meant accounting all product specific patterns and conducting a competitive analysis of other QA software sets, all while conforming to desktop conventions so the user’s experience was positive and familiar enough to be productive.
Solution
During my analysis I identified and solved several usability problems, resulting in the following solutions:
- Ensured consistency of the primary flows of the latest version (v6)
- Designed new features so QMetry was better able to accept any testing platforms
- Integration with other platforms (i.e. JIRA)
- Created user onboarding help text
Process
Step 1: Brainstorming & sketching
I conducted regular design sessions and often brainstorm and sketch in my process. In this sketch, I’m working out a primary flow which allows users to input their device features/requirements into the system prior to executing their automated tests.
Step 2: Feedback
Once I solidified the design of a feature and a click path, I worked with QMetry’s Product Manger and iterated accordingly; I incorporated rapid prototyping into my workflow to best support my team. Since most of the visual design has been specified for QMetry, I am able to create high fidelity mock-ups quickly. Below is a prototype.
Step 3: User Testing
When high-level features were being designed, I conducted on-site usability sessions with QA professionals. We measured the usability heuristics and completion rate for each task presented to the users.
Step 4: Interaction Design
A key method of enhancing users’ productivity was building out interactions in features, particularly data visualizations. Visual displays of information became interactive and the design patterns fell within standard desktop conventions. We discovered the pattern kept the users’ mental load low, helping them concentrate on other factors, speeding up their daily workflow.
End result
QMetry 6 had a successful launch and continues to have strong features that customers have found useful. We found that customer feature requests were in line with our roadmap for the next release. As many of the big features were resolved, I became more focused on client projects until engineers upgraded the framework to support Sass. At that point, I started theming different versions of the product based on specific use cases.