Solidus
2023
- UX & UI Design
Managing the operation of an e-commerce site should not be frustrating and cumbersome. The global Solidus team, led by the folks at Nebulab, understood this. That’s why they decided to invest in creating an excellent user experience for the platform’s administrative back-office as well.
The goal was clear: make the interface simpler and more effective to meet the needs of both small stores and large vendors. In response to this need, Moze stepped in to lead the redesign process.
UX Analysis of the back office
Before designing the new Solidus back office UI, we conducted the UX Analysis of the existing interface.
The goal was to thoroughly understand how administrators interacted with the platform so that we could identify areas for improvement. This step was crucial because it provided a solid foundation for the design of the new system.
We conducted a round of stakeholder interviews involving key people from the Solidus core team, analyzed Solidus user interviews conducted by the team, and considered feedback left by community members on Slack, GitHub, and Stack Overflow.
This approach allowed us to gain a broad understanding of the daily challenges that administrators face, their needs, and the areas of the interface that are most important in their work process.
Finally, we conducted an analysis of User Experience best practices in the e-commerce industry, trying to identify trends and innovative solutions to be integrated into the new design.
A Design System for Solidus
We created a Design System for Solidus’ back office applications, consistent with the new Brand Manual and based on a mobile first approach. This choice ensured the development of a highly responsive interface, easy to use on a wide range of devices, to enable e-commerce store administrators to do their best work on the go.
Since Solidus’ front-end code is developed using the open source Tailwind CSS framework, we structured the Design System components by adopting its principles and guidelines.
Designing a new Design System for an established brand requires being attentive to many factors. While it is essential to respect the specific peculiarities of the brand and product, it is also crucial to adhere to established best practices and existing frameworks. For Solidus, we created a Design System that is customized but entirely cut to the existing technology stack.
Core sections design
We designed the core sections of the Solidus administration panel. This phase was critical to simplify the UX of the most important interactions such as order, shipping, and payment management.
We made wireframes of the main user flows, iterating on them several times in close collaboration with the Solidus team. In this way we were able to address the most complex challenges quickly and arrive at the final interface design in a short time.
Having a clear overview is critical to designing a consistent user experience. By focusing on the specific needs of administrators and their experience, we were able to reduce complexity, simplifying key actions and improving the overall usability of the administration panel.
The Agile way
The collaboration between Moze and Solidus was carried out following our Agile process, which ensures speed and flexibility. All work was organized in consecutive biweekly sprints.
The Agile approach fosters the growth of trusting relationships, and this project is proof of that: even after the redesign is complete we are continuing to work alongside Solidus developers to design new features and suggest ongoing improvements.
«With Moze, we laid a robust foundation for the new UX of the Solidus administrative panel. Their flexible approach, based on Agile methodology, allowed our teams to coordinate perfectly. We now have a completely revamped interface and a Design System that ensures the quality of future developments.»
Alberto Vena
Chief Technology Officer, Nebulab