Digital construction planning teams today expect their software applications to be intuitive, efficient and valuable from day one.
In my role as a user experience (UX) practitioner, I’ve learned that you need to encourage novices and please experts — not only meeting but exceeding their expectations. One of the ways to achieve this is by reducing the time to value (TTV) — the period it takes for people to derive meaningful benefits from an application.
Here are a few thoughts on the qualities that application choosers should look for to ensure their users obtain value in the shortest time possible.
The foundation of a valued application lies in a deep understanding of people’s behavior. I spent hours in jobsite trailers watching and listening to teams in weekly planning meetings using sticky notes and taped boards. I stood between tradespeople who were having heated discussions about keeping promises and getting work done.
I observed that those conversations, during which activity sequences were presented quickly and visually, were a key to getting agreement — and THAT moved work forward. Seeing their relationships with each other as a visual map allowed team members to step back and REALLY see the plan and then agree on the work to be done.
First impressions are important in personal relationships and the same holds true when faced with a new software application. If it looks complicated, it probably is. If there are many menus and tool choices, it’s intimidating, meaning there will be a learning curve — and most users will get off to a lousy start.
If it looks simple, like sticky notes on a wall, for example, there is a far greater chance that users will be willing to try one thing and then another. Reducing the barriers to understanding the idea of the application will increase their desire to learn it.
In many of the pull planning sessions that I watched, there were countless grumbles about filling out numerous activity tags. The value of visualizing and owning the activity commitments was apparent, but the process was laborious.
When you write something out by hand, it is representative of YOU. The conclusion was that we needed to maintain the idea of having the planners create their activities to reinforce ownership, because some digital applications negate that ownership. A culture of owning commitments is critical to a high-functioning team.
A digital application for planning that is focused on teams working together will need to have an engaging quality. That is, people should want to use it, and they will compare it with their other experiences in the digital world, including games.
In the early prototypes of Nialli™ Visual Planner, I introduced the idea of using gestures to provide a status for the tags on a touchscreen. In some of our first observations of planners using the gestures, we realized they were having fun. One of the comments made by a trade was: “Get up here and status your tags, or we’ll go back to paper.” A clear testament to a positive and engaging experience.
Paying attention to these ideas will help ensure you’re supplying digital solutions that will be fully embraced by your teams. Not only will these applications be effective and efficient, but they’ll also deliver immediate and enjoyable value. When evaluating a tool for planning, ask: Is this solution going to have a low time to value for even my least enthusiastic team member?
Find out how Nialli Visual Planner can help your team move from traditional planning with sticky notes to digitized planning — quickly and easily.