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Human Interface Group inspired BCT in evolving towards a user-centered design methodology and set the example to design even more successful applications in the range of document management products.

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The Project

BCT is a Dutch software company that offers solutions in the field of document management, information archiving, record management, automatic data extraction and workflow management.

'The Document Store' is a concept that supports the needs of users for these information management tools and the CORSA-DMS software is the most widely used interface in the CORSA range.

BCT is the market leader in the Benelux and is amongst the top 20 document management vendors worldwide.

The Challenge

BCT hired Human Interface Group for one important reason. The company was anxious to lose sales because of user interface issues... In their own view, what the competition offered was far more user friendly.

BCT wanted to start by making the DMS software more user friendly. The DMS software is used by office workers worldwide.

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What We Did

Human Interface Group started with an Expert Review on the CORSA/DMS application. The report pointed out some severe usability issues and although some problems could be fixed immediately, we recommended a redesign of the application.

For the next step -redesigning the user interface of the application- Human Interface Group delivered a new concept for the software, based on the tri-panel navigation model.

In about two weeks, Human Interface Group developed a Delphi prototype with the new user interface for CORSA DMS, now rebaptized 'DMS2006'.

The new user interface is tailored to the specific needs of the end users:

• A standard XP look & feel and behavior of the application
• Easy yet powerful search possibilities and retrieval of documents
• Transparent document management: sorting, filtering
• The possibility of custom made folders and queries
• Automatic preview of the document
• Advanced customization of the UI
• Clear instructions, embedded help and user support in various forms

BCT invited end users to participate in a focus group in order to test the prototype. Feedback was used to refine the prototype.

After the user tests, BCT and Human Interface Group developed a user interface style guide to standardize the user interface of all future BCT developments.

The Results

The first results of the user feedback sessions were very positive:

• "The software is very familiar and recognizable"
• "Clearly a giant leap forward"
• "This looks very good to me, when can we have it?"

Related pages

Refer to:
Services: Evaluation for more information about expert evaluations;
Services: Design for more information about user interface (re)design.