Enterprise UX for Underwriters Laboratories (UL)

Enterprise UX for Underwriters Laboratories (UL)

Enterprise UX for Underwriters Laboratories (UL)

Enterprise UX for Underwriters Laboratories (UL)

Overview

UL is the largest and oldest product safety certification enterprise in the United States. Trusted by companies like Apple and federal agencies.

It's common to find the UL certification logo in most of the products and materials we use today.

Challenge

Designing access to complex data from multiple sources, databases and directories for Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a 125-year-old enterprise and one of the most trusted safety compliance systems in the world.

Solution

Reduced development costs with a design system that ensures consistency across touchpoints, increased efficiency in accessing database records and an enhanced user experience.

My contribution

Role:
Experience Designer

Timeline:
Mar - Jun 2017

Tools:
Sketch, Invision and Zeplin

The team

10 × stakeholders
2 × UX designers
1 × director of UX
5 × engineers


Year

2017

Process



Discover

Our UX team of four at Wayfinder, a design agency based in Miami, led discovery workshops that included card sorting activities and whiteboarding sessions that later helped us organize content and key functionalities. We relied on extensive task analyses, experience maps, and sketching to better understand the challenges faced.

Over the course of six months, we collaborated on-site in Northbrook, IL and remotely from our sunny Miami, FL studio.




The Double Diamond by the Design Council is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.


Users often …

complained about the fact that finding certification data was an obscure process that was manually intensive - think paper forms;

felt apprehensive about how digital access to data would affect their workflow.



Define

We worked closely with the team at UL and its customers to fully understand, identify opportunities, and define a plan to build a tool that could provide a quick and easy way to access safety certification data, quotes, orders, safety inspection reports, procedures, and global certifications.

Stakeholders involved in the design process consisted of UL's business analysts, subject matter experts, developers, and customer service representatives.



Develop

I was tasked with delivering several rounds of sketches, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.

Through working sessions and interviews, we came up with a solution that enables access to complex data from multiple sources with a handful of simple, well-designed templates.



Prototype testing

Each concept was validated with users, through testing and iteration alongside intensive collaboration with the team at UL, we were able to narrow down the functionality that would be most useful for UL customers.



Collaboration with developers

We frequently requested feedback from developers as well. Design reviews where conducted remotely and facilitated by sharing design concepts using Marvel. Detailed wireframes, mockups and style-guides allowed the development team to focus on building everything properly. Design specifications where delivered to the development team using Zeplin.



Deliver

A responsive web-based solution that can be used by UL customers from anywhere, at anytime.

The desktop UI adapts beautifully to mobile devices, so that users everywhere can benefit – especially in countries where internet access is predominantly mobile.


Outcome

The resulting myUL® Client Portal was launched in 2019 and marketed as a secure, full-service client portal and powerful knowledge bank for UL project files, product information, documents and services. See release statement.

Key results:

  • Reduced development costs with a design system that ensures consistency across touch points;

  • Increased efficiency in accessing database records;

  • An enhanced user experience.