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UX strategy • usability engineering • systems thinking
Swyx enterprise instant messaging application
Sector
Company
Duration
Business Communication
Enreach GmbH
6 months
Role
Scope
UX/UI Designer
I designed a business instant messaging and chat application for desktop. The product was implemented as an integrated part of Swyxware, a business communication system that primarily provides VoIP services for complex audio communication setups in call centers and offices.
My responsibilities included research, ideation, interaction design, information architecture, layout design, UI design, prototyping, preparing UI guidelines for the development team, and reviewing implementations for iterative improvement.
Swyx was a company primarily focused on voice communication over IP and data visualization systems. However, after joining the Enreach Group, it began investing in more integrated communication channels, instant messaging, video conferencing, and collaboration solutions. This project aligned with the company's new strategy and forward-looking improvements. In this project, I closely collaborated with the PM and the PO, engaging in an iterative process with the development team within an agile framework.
Research
The Swyx IM project was my second project at the company, undertaken while I was still working as a part-time designer. Given my unfamiliarity with the domain, I structured my early research as a broad exploration of instant messaging. This included reviewing current IM solutions, industry best practices, and analyzing how "chat" functions differently in standard versus business contexts. I also examined existing Swyx products to understand their mental models and brand identity, ensuring I could maintain consistency in the new application.
The next phase focused on understanding Swyx's users and customers. As a B2B company targeting SMEs in Germany, Swyx's design approach still needed to center on end users, despite the B2B context. Many Swyx users worked in service or call centers with heavy phone usage, but the company's evolving strategy was expanding its addressable market to include the telecommunications, manufacturing, IT, and healthcare sectors. I leveraged existing company personas to identify user needs, behaviors, and contexts across these diverse groups.
Challenges in the process
The main challenge in this project was that I was the first, and at the time the only, designer at the company. As part of the Enreach Group, they had already started working with designers remotely, but this was still very limited, and many of my teammates didn't yet have a workflow that included designers or clear design processes in place. I needed to carve out space for design within their existing workflows, and to show them what design accountability and design concerns actually looked like in practice. Since I was the only designer, I had to take the initiative myself in refining these workflows and processes.
A second challenge was directly related to the project itself. I wasn't the designer who had originally started the project; one of the remote designers had already made a quick start on it and created a rough layout. Implementation had already begun based on this initial layout, which I wasn't allowed to change due to time constraints. So I had to define all the sub-screens, all interactions, and the placement of all content and components according to this predefined layout, and find workable solutions within those constraints.
Swyx app in the market
Due to the B2B nature of the product, and especially because of time and budget constraints, I wasn't able to have direct contact with end users. However, I still needed to create a product that would be easy to understand and use for Swyx's existing users. To work around this, besides reviewing existing style guides and previous research and products from Swyx, I held both organized and informal meetings with colleagues who had closer contact with customers and regularly received end-user feedback. This was very helpful in building an understanding of users' current and possible future needs.
Strategy
Considering all the data and knowledge I had gathered, I defined my aim as creating a "minimalist" and "task-oriented" product that would work in sync with the company's other applications. I started by defining the main user flows around the core user goals.
Final Design
After defining the necessary screens and steps, I began detailing the early rough layout of the main screen, followed by composing the main interactions, links to other screens, behaviors, and detailed flows. As I was also responsible for the UI design of the product, my visual explorations developed in parallel with my interaction design process. While this made the process considerably more complex, it helped visual solutions evolve alongside interaction needs.
Sample screens from the final design
As we were working within an agile structure, after designing the main concept and overall structure of the app, I began working directly from the sprint backlogs, providing the designs needed for each sprint by different teams. In these subsequent stages, we focused on detailed interactions, additional features, and refinements to existing details. I delivered a number of feature-specific solutions, presenting them in different ways depending on the topic or the people I was working with. These topics included things like sharing various media types, integrating additional features, connecting our solutions to other applications, and improving search functionality, among others. The improvement of the product continues to this day, in an iterative manner.
Storyboard on the design solution for integrating Swyx Meeting solution to the IM solution
Some parts from a guideline shared with the development team
Implementation review
This project was very important for my career: I worked closely with German colleagues and was able to establish a new workflow within the company that incorporated design processes in an iterative manner. I managed to complete the project within the necessary timeframe and with positive results, despite working part-time for most of it. I believe I was also able to demonstrate, or at least raise the question in people's minds, that design can create significant value for companies when it is treated as an integral part of the work process. By the end of this project, once I was permitted to work full-time in Germany, I began working as a full-time designer at the company and within the group.