FileNet

Overview
With more than 4000 corporate customers, including 80 of the Fortune 100 in 90 countries, FileNet, is a leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software. At the time, FileNet sought Rocket’s help to launch their Team Collaboration Manager application; the first web-based, out-of-the-box solution to deliver team collaboration seamlessly integrated with content management and fully functional business process management (BPM) capabilities.

To enter the new market and compete as effectively as possible with established products - usability had been identified by customers as the single most important factor for success (or failure) of this application - FileNet contracted Rocket to differentiate Team Collaboration with a superior UI and visual design.

FileNet contacted Rocket to help to differentiate Team Collaboration Manager from the competition by providing it with a superior UI and visual design. Usability had been identified by FileNet customers as the single most important reason for qualifying their products as successful.

“We’ve taken collaboration to the next level,” said Lee Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer for FileNet. “Team Collaboration Manager succeeds where other collaboration solutions fall short – in facilitating deep and meaningful collaboration among work groups and project teams from an integrated business process and content management standpoint. For the first time, enterprises can manage their mission-critical business projects and make sure everyone is on the same page – where ever they are located in the world.”

The Rocket design team addressed the following product interface components:

• User interface paradigm
• Navigation schema
• Screen layout
• Workflow
• Interaction behavior
• Alert and error handling
• Visual language design
• Graphic asset production
• Dynamic Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) templates

Product Functionality
Team Collaboration Manager is a powerful product that enables group members to share information, participate in structured or unstructured processes and handle exceptions to these processes across geographic or functional areas. Team Collaboration Manager provides tools to provide users access to manage, customize, and attend discussion forums, Web meetings, and interactive polls, and accomplish ad-hoc tasks.

Project Timeline
To meet critical code-freeze deadlines and the launch date, this project was delivered in 2 months using LaunchPAD™, Rocket’s multi-phased design process.

Challenges
To be successful, Team Collaboration Manager needed to be both intuitive to a wide range of user types across ethnicities, business roles, and technology competence, and be infinitely scalable and modular. Further complicating the design requirements, while some of the functionality was commonplace (such as creating a new file), much was unique and conceptually new. Therefore, the UI design needed to make this functionality not only easy to learn for new users and easily customizable for power users.

To be successful, Team Collaboration Manager needed to be intuitive to a wide range of user types, be easily customizable for power users, be infinitely scaleable, and be modular in structure. Further complicating the design requirements were some unique and conceptually new features that did not easily fit within existing industry standards. In addition to these overarching design criteria, Rocket had to meet the following specific design requirements:

•	Create a seamless user experience across the entire range of collaboration and workflow management modules
•	UI must use self-explanatory nomenclature and provide intuitive placement of action buttons
•	With no training, users must understand how to effectively use Team Collaboration Manager
•	Rocket must interpret FileNet marketing requirements into a new graphic Visual Design for Team Collaboration that differentiates it from competitive products while remaining compatible in general look and feel with Microsoft Windows guidelines
•	Rapidly communicate UI optimization recommendations to FileNet engineering for immediate integration into the code base

Project Approach
Working in parallel with FileNet’s engineering team, the Rocket and FileNet design teams conducted a rapid knowledge transfer phase covering stakeholder requirements, user needs, engineering requirements, scope of desired product functionality, and the underlying code infrastructure of Team Collaboration Manager.

To establish the base interaction foundation, Rocket developed a navigation schema optimized for the target use cases. Guided by this schema, Rocket then defined the screen-to-screen flows, screen layouts, filtering mechanisms, data display rules, and in-screen controls (e.g., radio buttons, check boxes, etc). To provide perceptual cues that aid usability, the team also modified the use of the algorithm that organized the display and prioritization of the data.

After the UI was restructured, Rocket created a new color palette and visual treatments to make the application appear decidedly FileNet with softer more welcoming tones while stylistically modern with a Windows XP compatible look. As graphic elements were finalized, they were immediately transferred to FileNet engineering for coding.

Rocket created a new Visual Language for Team Collaboration Manager that was designed to enhance the product usability as well as provide a unique visual style to distinguish it as a FileNet product. The design style requirements from FileNet were to create a softer more welcoming product while remaining compatible with the Windows XP visual design guidelines. Rocket chose to use inviting colors and tones, as well as to use colors to assist users in recognizing important information and flow of content. As graphic assets and screen designs were finalized and approved, they were immediately delivered to the FileNet engineering team for implementation.

Project Outcome
The new GUI designs met all of the design requirements on time and on budget, with these additional achievements:

•	Delivery exceeded client expectations, resulting in an acceleration of the entire product launch timeline
•	FileNet acknowledged Rocket’s work as a dramatic improvement to the performance of Team Collaboration Manager

Client Testimonial
“The joint Rocket and FileNet team did such a good job with the UI design and implementation that the launch plan got accelerated”

Eric Tran, Senior Marketing Manager
FileNet

Before: Original FileNet Design and UI

 

After: FileNet Design and UI by Rocket

 

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