Linde Group
Linde sales staff are on the road a lot during their sales meetings. It is difficult to respond directly to customer-specific requirements and wishes and to present solutions quickly. In addition, Linde has just added a large number of new products to its range. In order to make the sales process faster and more efficient, the idea of a tablet app crystallised. Primarily, it should be possible to compile welding gases individually. We began our work with the aim of optimising and professionalising the sales talk.
Together with our client REPPA, we fully conceptualised and designed the tablet app. The work resulted in a complex prototype that can be presented on tablets. This formed the basis for the implementation. With the app, a Linde sales representative can now easily compile welding gases for customer-specific projects. In addition, the app provides appropriate information during customer meetings.
January 2018 - March 2018
At the beginning, we received some requirements from our client. In order to be able to classify these, we created a user journey from them. This means that the requirements were put into a chronological order. The beginning of the user journey is the start of the customer conversation and explains how the salesperson wants to use the app in the conversation. In a large group, we then conducted a workshop called Collaborative Sketching. For this, the user journey is presented to all workshop participants and everyone draws ideas for the user interface of the app on a paper in short time intervals. The ideas are presented by each person. The sketches were taken up by two coeno conceptual designers to create wireframes.
The conceptual phase was accompanied by a lively exchange of information with the client in order to understand the various requirements and make decisions based on them. For example, we decided to use very large buttons and menu items, as the salesperson wants to be able to easily click on the different menu items during a conversation. To make it easy for the gas salesman and department manager/welders to look at the tablet together, the texts are chosen to be relatively large. These and other questions were quickly finalised and the app could be designed with the help of the wireframes. Two of the resulting wireframes can be seen here.
Brand recognition and first impressions were taken into account in the design alongside standard themes. Concise brand elements were used in the app. This is reflected in the splash screen (loading screen), in the font and in the colour scheme. Since customers and salespersons want to grasp information quickly, the design was created with high contrasts. This increases readability. The main content stands out strongly against a blue-grey background. Additional colours were used to better differentiate the products in comparison graphics. Design-wise and concept-wise, we also paid attention to the navigation structure and the quick accessibility of projects.In this project, we did not only deliver the designs as screens in PNG format, but further processed them into a prototype. With a programme suitable for this purpose, we were able to map a large number of interactions. A prototype reduces the cognitive effort required to understand relationships in the app. The prototype, which can be played on a tablet, helped our client to present the product internally.
