Interview: How Automic creates good User Experience

For many Automic customers, it’s currently a very big issue: In the latest version, the Java UI is no longer supported. Instead, everything is now running through the Automic Web Interface (AWI), a browser-based interface that’s in many ways more user-friendly and powerful than the old one.

Automic is currently conducting a survey to better respond to users’ needs in the coming versions. On this occasion, I had the chance to talk with Sandra Dietinger (User Experience Designer) and Tobias Stanzel (Product Manager) of Automic and interview them about the AWI and its future.

Update: In the meantime, the survey is finished and we will all have to wait and see, what consequences Automic will draw from the results.

Philipp Elmer: Everyone is talking about it – at least your customers: The AWI replaces the Java UI. For many of your customers, this is a hot topic right now because they are switching to the new version 12 and have to use the AWI.
My personal impression of the AWI in V12.1 is very positive, I rather see the advantages than the criticisms.
Nevertheless, first of all I would like to know why Automic decided to replace the Java UI completely?

Tobias Stanzel: Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons is the ability to centrally manage the AWI. This significantly simplifies maintenance if you have many employees.
We wanted to bring the interface to the web, so that in the long run we can offer our software as a hosted service. With a pure offline client that would not have been possible.
Also, we could not bring the user experience to the desired level with the old interface.

Philipp Elmer: The web interface is software, so developers are working on it. Our topic today is the usability and user experience. How is the cooperation of these different departments organized?

Sandra Dietinger: We work agile, so we collaborate very closely with the developers. Working according to the classic waterfall principle, we would only send the finished design to the developers. That’s not how we work. Right from the start, the developers are involved in the process.
That way, we can creatively develop ideas while making sure we do not get any ideas out of thin air that are not feasible.

[bctt tweet=”That way, we can creatively develop ideas while making sure we do not get any ideas out of thin air that are not feasible. – Sandra Dietinger”]

Tobias Stanzel: Product management and product design, too, play a role in the process. For example, when identifying customer problems. They first examine the problem with UX methods and then communicate with developers and engineers. Most of the time, initially, there’s a prototype created, which we then discuss with the end users who reported the problem.

Sandra Dietinger: And then we bring the customers’ feedback back to the developers so they are as close as possible to the end users.

Philipp Elmer: The conversion of the user interface for such a large software is a huge thing. How did you organize to do that – on top of the normal development and maintenance of your products?

Tobias Stanzel: That was in deed a great challenge. We have developed further, built in additional functions and, at the same time, had to replicate the functions of the last 15 years.
In order to overcome this, we have resorted to external teams. Some teams were responsible for develop new stuff – and then always had to develop for the AWI, too. And other teams were solely responsible for transferring the old areas.
Some of the teams are still here, incorporating customer feedback.

Philipp Elmer: With version 12.1, the AWI’s functionality is more or less at the same point where the Java UI was. But not yet 100%. It just cannot do everything the Java UI could.
Nevertheless, you have decided not to support the Java UI in the V12.1 anymore. Why is that?

Tobias Stanzel: To put all the energy into the AWI. We want to get the AWI where we imagine it to be as soon as possible. This would not be possible with a two-pronged approach.

[bctt tweet=”We want to get the AWI where we imagine it to be as soon as possible. – Tobias Stanzel, Automic”]

Philipp Elmer: From a UX perspective, what are the most important advantages of the AWI compared to the Java UI?

Sandra Dietinger: The Global Search is very powerful and very fast. You will not only find objects with it, but also tasks and activities. And you can execute actions directly from within the search.
We also tried to make things easier, for example the calendar. Many clients have their calendars prepared by consultants and after that just use them. We wanted to make it easier for customers to apply calendars themselves.
We also worked a lot on the performance of the Workflow Editor. We now support a lot of agents, up to half a million. Since a lot of data is loaded, the UI must be able to handle it.

Philipp Elmer: What does the Roadmap look like for the future? Which AWI topics are currently under development and what improvements will come with V12.2?

Tobias Stanzel: Unfortunately, I do not know the exact ranking. We are still collecting and processing customer input. In any case, even before V12.2, some small bugs are fixed directly in service packs.
We also work on the performance of the Workflow Editor and on mass processing at workflow level. This can be used, for example, to cut parts of a workflow and paste them into another. It’s Multi-Select for workflow tasks.
We also got a lot of input in terms of monitoring and operating. Customers who wanted to monitor several applications at the same time used to do this in the rich client via the tabbing system. Now there are browser tabs and various pages in the dashboard, but not yet an optimal solution.
In the case of notification objects, i.e. call objects, the AWI does not yet support any active alarm that the user receives when he is not working with the AWI. However, we are working on a solution to ensure that such notifications are displayed via browser notifications.

Philipp Elmer: So far with the AWI, you were mainly trying to close the gap to the Java UI.
In my opinion, this is sometimes painful to see. For example, in the Advanced Search. The new search uses an index and is therefore theoretically much faster and more powerful, but still limited by the scope of functionality what the Java UI could already do with the object search.
Why did you not simply say for the Advanced Search: We’ll make it even better?

Tobias Stanzel: Yes, the search still has a lot of potential. But at first we wanted to replicate the old search to 100%, because it is connected to many areas of the system. From 12.0 to 12.1, we already made a big jump with that.
Now we have to fix a few weak points, so that users do not encounter gaps or need too many clicks for activities. After that, we will expand it further. That’s just how priorities are. Unfortunately, not much more is planned for the V12.2.

Philipp Elmer: To please all users, you need feedback from as many customers as possible. This brings us to the main topic of the interview, the persona concept. What exactly is the persona concept?

[bctt tweet=”With the questionnaire, we want to collect quantitative data to see how customers use Automic. – Sandra Dietinger, Automic”]

Sandra Dietinger: Personas are example users – not a single user, but a summation of several. We create them based on collected data from real Automic users.
We take a look: What are your goals? What are your frustrations? What do you like? With this we want to get a concrete idea of our customers. So we do not just think from our own perspective, but also get more the view of the customers.
In the case of Automic, we combine the Persona concept with a role concept.

Tobias Stanzel: There is, for example, the 30-year-old, technology-minded operator with two academic degrees. On the other hand, we also have the line of business user who is less familiar with IT.
When I communicate with a development team, through the persona I can tell the team who we need to develop a solution for. Depending on who it’s for, the solution might look completely different.

Philipp Elmer: You have now developed a questionnaire to get feedback from customers. What is the idea behind it?

Sandra Dietinger: We are currently questioning our role concept and want to find out if it corresponds to the real world and if our personas fit at all.
With the questionnaire, we want to collect quantitative data to see how customers use Automic.
In checklists, the participants indicate which activities they carry out. From this we derive roles and personas. Because it might be that the roles are completely different and there are for example, in addition to developers and administrators also all-rounders.

[bctt tweet=”If you want to make sure that the next Automic versions meet your expectations, you should definitely participate in the survey! – Tobias Stanzel, Automic”]

Tobias Stanzel: If you want to make sure that the next Automic versions meet your expectations, you should definitely participate in the survey! And if you have any comments, problems or suggestions, you should definitely contact the PM.

Philipp Elmer: I think, that’s a nice sentence to end the interview. Thank you both for the interview.