Waterfield Technologies

OutSystems today announced that the company’s Agile Platform will benefit from a joint project between OutSystems and Carnegie Mellon University, whose study of user interaction is being used to enhance the platform’s overall user experience, with a focus on developers.

Over an eight-month period, five graduate students in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute’s Masters program studied the Agile Platform to understand how it is being used by people with varying levels of technical expertise, from developers to project managers.

Following Carnegie Mellon University’s own methodology on experience-driven user design, the students studied the daily activities of Agile Platform users. This style of study allowed the students to elicit user needs, motivations and overall reaction to the platform. With ergonomics, aesthetics and comfort in mind, the team then prototyped and tested solutions to overcome the challenges experienced by users.

In particular, the team focused on improving the user interaction, making information in the Agile Platform more readily available to developers, improving support for commenting and revisiting past work, and supporting collaboration between developers working on the same project.

In addition to this project, OutSystems will continue this research internally, continuing to improve the Agile Platform’s user experience so IT teams have tools that are effective, efficient, and intuitive.

“The main objective of this project was to have a fresh look into our products from emerging areas of expertise,” said Carlos Alves, Vice President of Engineering, OutSystems. “Carnegie Mellon University’s excellence in user experience methodologies, and our own ideas and experience, have stimulated innovation throughout the company, leading to a better product for our customers and the industry.”

“The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Masters program at Carnegie Mellon University prepares students to participate in the design and implementation of software systems that are usable, are effective and contribute to an overall brand experience,“ said Anind K. Dey, assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. “Collaborating with OutSystems was a terrific opportunity for our students to really apply their skills to a real-world application. We are thrilled with the outcome and the fact that the industry will benefit from this combined work and innovation with OutSystems.”