A brief update about the latest developments in Ispolink’s UX/UI design

by Jens Gantz

User centric design is the key‍

As a SAAS-Company we want to provide you with a product that is not only valuable for you in your daily life, but also is a pleasure to use. Therefore, my job as the lead designer here at ispolink is to bring you the best user experience imaginable — and to do so user centric design is the key.

The user centric design process (UCD) is an approach that puts the user of a product at the center of its design and development. This guarantees that the software will be easy to use and serves customers needs. That’s why we’ve included you, the customers, in the design process with our public beta. You gave us great feedback and we collected a lot of valuable data to make improvements for you.

Below you can find a chart with the results of the survey from our beta test that shows the most crucial topics for us to work on.

As you can see: There is the wish for very specific features like a dark mode, but bigger design structures also need to be improved, like the optimization of the overall responsiveness of the Ispolink platform. Based on those insights we’ve made a lot of improvements already, which I want to share with you today. So here’s a sneak peak of what we’re currently working on and what changes you can expect in the next few weeks.

Responsive Design and Mobile Optimization: Ispolink on every device‍

In times where more than 80% of all users visit a website via smartphone, a mobile optimized application clearly is a no brainer. We discussed this topic already internally. So you can be sure: The overall UI design will be perfectly responsive soon.

To make the UI more flexible and therefore more adaptable to different screen sizes, we’re going to change the navigation. The navigation at the top will be replaced by a navigation drawer on the left. That way we can provide you with not only more space for the things that really matter (=your personal content) but also provide you with a smoother responsive experience.

Below you can see the old design (left) and the new design (right) of the hiring process board as an example. The old design used a top navigation bar, the new one shows our new navigation drawer (and an overall redesign).

Oh, and if you need even more space the navigation drawer can be collapsed — fully adjustable to your needs.

This is only what we will change short term, but for sure we will not stop there. In the long run we will provide you with a fully functional mobile app, bringing you all the comfort of the desktop version to your very own smartphone. Check your vacancies, send in an application for your dream job and even have your job interview on the road via video call — this and much more will be possible soon.

UX/UI improvements: Optimization according to your needs

Maybe you know it from your own days at the office: There are a lot of useful tools which provide you with necessary services for your daily work, but a lot of them are not exciting to use. Often we have a bad user experience even if the software does what it needs to do.

But we don’t want to provide you with just another forgettable piece of software that just „does what it needs to do“. We here at Ispolink had to deal with a lot of bad user experiences using different types of software in our carriers — and having our very own bad experiences in mind, we want to avoid that on our platform of course. We want you to be satisfied with our product in every way. Your experience is crucial for your success at work and for our success as a company.

You gave us a lot of valuable feedback to make some very useful UX/UI improvements. Not only to make the interface more pleasing to the eye but make it easier and more comfortable to use. So we’re working on overall better user feedback on the platform, an improved navigation, a reworked color palette, new icons, an extensive style guide for all of our assets and many more. Stay tuned for more.

Dark mode: We’re joining the dark side

Another topic which is pretty far at the top of your wishlist is the dark mode. Especially having the mobile optimization in mind and that switching places generally comes with a change of light conditions, this one makes very much sense. It also seems only logical in a world where working from home with teams across different time zones and flexible working hours becomes more and more the standard and therefore people have to work more in the evening hours, where a dark mode is simply more pleasing to the eye.

So a dark mode theme is a powerful functional improvement and we will definitely implement it in the near future. We’re currently working on an inverted version of our color palette to bring you the best experience for the dark mode.

New Feature: The calendar view

Another topic which is pretty far at the top of your wishlist is the dark mode. Especially having the mobile optimization in mind and that switching places generally comes with a change of light conditions, this one makes very much sense. It also seems only logical in a world where working from home with teams across different time zones and flexible working hours becomes more and more the standard and therefore people have to work more in the evening hours, where a dark mode is simply more pleasing to the eye.

Now you can see all your scheduled interviews in one place, clean and simple organized in a list and packed with all the information you need about your interview partner and direct links for even more infos. Plus, there’s a date picker so you can jump straight to a specific upcoming meeting. And if a meeting will start soon, you will get a push notification as a reminder.

What else?

There’s even more: There will be a new optimized color palette according to your feedback, more filter options will be implemented to find the right job and the right candidates. We will also include more details about every vacant job.

What else? Just sign up and find it out in the upcoming weeks and months by using and testing our platform. Help us to deliver further improvements and create with us the best platform for tech talents in the blockchain space.

Coming soon

Besides the UX/UI part we’re constantly improving as a company. That’s why we’re also working on a brand and identity design update. I’m looking forward to bringing you updates in the near future.

So stay tuned and follow us on Twitter at @ispolink. And if you want exiting pieces of UX/UI and branding updates on a regular basis, please feel free to follow me on Twitter too at @gantzdesign