Mission that demands (user) experience

Because Marketplanet is a company that operates within the public sector, they had to organize a public tender to find the right partner for the job. We were one of many companies that made an offer. According to the client’s testimony, we won thanks to our insight, experience, commitment and rich portfolio.

The task at hand was difficult on a few levels. The biggest challenge was that Marketplanet platform was, up to that moment, developed only by back-end devs. There was little to no input by any UX specialists for 15 years of its continuous development. Over the last few years, several companies developed similar products with more user-friendly interfaces. Given that, we had to build a truly future-proof UX.

Let’s take “user-friendly” to the next level

Our goal was clear; we needed to create a fast, easy-to-use interface, which stands out from the competition and makes the platform easy first-choice for clients. Research in similar apps gave us some ideas for improvement, but the real game-changer was gathering feedback from actual users.

We spent numerous hours talking with hospital workers, school suppliers and local government officials, asking them about their experience with the app and expectations. They helped us realize the gravity of the issue. Public procurement involves products like ventilators and face masks, so the interface had to be perfectly accessible and absolutely reliable.

Working within tight legal regulations (and short deadline)

Another tricky aspect of the process comes from the very nature of the Marketplanet platform. Because it’s serving public sector entities, it needs to be in line with a very specific set of regulations. The problem at the time was that some of the rules were being changed in the middle of our designing process. We had to make several key adjustments right before the deadline!