portfolio : ETI Solution - software application interface design
Software interface design, icons, corporate identity
client ETI
www. ETI.com
Software interface design for the ETI Solution desktop application, application icons, corporate identity.
ETI Solution has been recognized as the most powerful ETL (Extract Transform Load) code generator for more than 10 years but ETI ran into a problem—customers began to complain about the software interface. ETI asked us to figure out the problem, find a solution and implement it.
What makes software hard to learn?
How could it be that some of ETI's customers could manage literally billions of transactions and others never used the software? Our research discovered that, yes, ETI Solution was powerful. It worked and wasn't hard to use. But it was very hard to learn. Customers needed to surmount a long and steep learning curve before realizing the benefits of the software.
What makes software hard to learn? Not following standard, established interface design. Our job became crystal clear: work with the ETI team to redesign the ETI Solution interface according to standard interface design practices.
We worked with ETI for more than 5 years, 
providing not only interface design but also web application design, packaging and general graphic design.
• right
Moving data and transactions inspired the logo design for the ETI Solution software.
• above
The redesign for ETI Solution allowed us to find several unique solutions to certain interactions. The marriage of a graphical programming metaphor and a table based metaphor was one of these. —Rick Ligas
• left
The browser area.
• below left
Hundreds of new icons were designed for the ETI Solution software.
• above right
Sketches during the research phase.
After months of brainstorming, a new vision for ETI Solution emerged. It wasn't the child of any one team member - it synthesized the best thinking of all the team.
It was important to visualize all of the thinking during the brainstorming sessions with sketches. We made hundreds of sketches and they represented the team's thinking from the most conceptual to, eventually, the most detailed. —Rick Ligas
• left
Booklets, CD-Roms and a new corporate image for the ETI Solution software completed the project: from consulting to interface design to packaging.
