Provide reliable data about employees' perceptions of the tools they are using for daily activities.

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The customer is a multi-national manufacturer with facilities all over the world and has more than 45 internal built applications used by its employees. The apps cover tasks from production planning, going through the supply chain, and ending with sales and financial services.

At this amplitude, the resource allocation for improvements or further software development relies many times on how vocal are the different level managers. Trying to assess the priorities through usability is not common and prove to have additional important benefits.

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The usability assessment was done in 2 steps:
• Heuristic Evaluation (assesses each app against some UX Good Practice rules),
• User Perception Assessment (uses questionnaires to estimate the subjective users' perception about the given apps)

The Heuristic Assessment is fast, strong, and allows comparison between apps built with different technologies in different moments in time.
On the other hand, this method disregards the purpose and the context of use.

User Perception Assessment has bias generated by human nature.
This is happening because of multiple reasons, like familiar usage patterns, the app's controllability feeling, or simply overwhelming emotions.

Overlapping the findings from multiple usability testing methods straightened the reliability of the business solutions provided for top management.

The process implied more than 150 interviews and business meetings with more than 25 different teams from different countries all over the globe. The participants included business owners, key users, developers, and IT support teams.

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Each discussion started by emphasizing the objective of this assessment, which was not to find responsibles for the negative issues, but to identify solutions with those able to implement them.

All procedures were explained to participants, and both advantages and disadvantages of them were described in detail and with examples.

The mitigation measures were discussed inside the teams and only more feasible measures were included in the reports for upper management levels.
Even more than that, quick fixes were decided and implemented on the spot.

This approach creates a high level of trust and increased the engagement of all participants.

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For each app, the report has 2 parts:
• Heuristic score and
• Comments with facts and recommended business decisions.

This project proved to be an alternative feedback channel for organizations. The employees had the chance to speak about their professional needs with somebody else than direct managers or the HR department.

Quite unexpected and very encouraging, the project became the perfect stage to build awareness for Human-Centered Design methodologies as well.

Due to its success, the Usability Assessment is now part of the business strategy and occurs yearly with the support of all business levels.

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Treat your employees as they are your business customers.

Human-Centered Methodology does improve not only the quality of the product but also the Organizational Culture of the company.

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* IT ENDS HERE! *