Introduction
MadCap Software serves as a trusted provider of single-source, multi-channel authoring and publishing solutions for over 3,500 companies worldwide such as Amazon, AMD, Sony, and UPS just to name a few. Currently they have over 25,000 active users.
Madcap Central is the companion web app to Madcap Flare, the company's desktop software. It allows authors to collaborate in real time, create and manage projects, control versioning, and chat from any device's web browser.
My Role
As the Lead UI Designer, I was tasked with redesigning the UI as well as the UX.
The Problem
The existing UI/UX created a high cognitive load and looked very dated and uninviting. The sale of upgrades was low due to the purchase UI being hidden away.
The Goal
The goal of this redesign was to make this web app look modern, fun, and inviting as well as to make it easy for users to harness all of its powerful features.
Impact
After launching the new redesign and showcasing it at the Madworld technical authoring event in San Diego California, sales and active user counts more than tripled.
Early Ideation
The existing design utilized cards, so I began shifting towards material design with a completely new style guide, new colors, new icons, and new fonts. I then tackled the challenge of shielding the complexities of the UI from the user until the point in the user flow that they were needed. This included taking the existing three top navigation bars and organizing them into one, simple to use top bar, all while keeping front of mind that future versions will need to be usable on mobile devices.
Testing
Leveraging our talented QA team as well as select customers to test the redesign prototypes and early live versions were instrumental in refining and fine tuning both the ease of use and usefulness of each feature.
Final Designs
Here are some of the final designs created in Adobe XD that were put into development and launched globally. If you'd like to see it in action, there is a product demo video available:
https://youtu.be/Hd5zlDQ0q1U
https://youtu.be/Hd5zlDQ0q1U
Development
Working hand in hand with the development and QA teams for over a year, we took this project from moodboards and hand drawn wireframes to a fully realized, powerful, and successful product in the marketplace.
Future Steps
This product will continue to expand over time to include more and more of the powerful features that its companion desktop software offers.