Acuity Scheduling Case Study

Acuity Scheduling Case Study

acuityscheduling.com

Acuity Scheduling is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that provides online appointment scheduling services. The application's users were finding the tool "either incredibly easy to use, or incredibly hard to use." While the technical skills of users were once considered advanced, these skills have decreased over time and users are now considered to have medium-to-low technical ability. Acuity's objectives were to:

  • Streamline and simplify the initial setup, and
  • Make it easier to establish complex availabilities in the schedule.


Services

  • Experience Strategy
  • Heuristic Evaluation
  • Competitive Analysis

Normal Modes's recommendations provided insight into Acuity for the customer's enjoyment and the business benefit. It was the combination of business savvy, thorough the competitive analysis, and usability ideas that set them apart. This exposed several easy ways to immediately improve customer experience and major changes we could work on in the long term. We were even more impressed when all this was completed and delivered in under a month!"
—Gavin Zuchlinski, Acuity Innovation, LLC

The Method

Normal Modes started by providing a usability review with a detailed competitive analysis for the existing client-side setup and configuration functionality. We then reviewed the client scheduling functionality, side-by-side with Acuity's identified competitors.

Following common use case scenarios, the usability review included prioritized actionable results along with suggestions to enhance the user experience.

The Findings

Normal Modes found that Acuity provides a stable and secure scheduling platform. Its strengths included slick, on-the-fly customization; calendar synchronization; and nice catalog management and integration. Opportunities for growth included its navigation and user cues; customer support; taking advantage of marketing opportunities; and – most importantly – calendar and scheduling user interfaces.

Provided suggestions to improve the main calendar display and simplify the scheduling process

The default calendar display in Acuity's application was a list of today's appointments. Normal Modes recommended that this be changed to display the appointments in a calendar format, with the ability to change the view from daily to weekly to monthly. The traditional calendar display makes it easier for users to scan the information and quickly find appointments.

We also suggested that Acuity update the scheduling process – from an involved, step-by-step process that took the user away from the main calendar – to a simple, all-in-one modal window that is activated by clicking the time slot or a New Appointment link.

Gave recommendations designed to ease the setup process

Acuity identified the initial setup as a particularly troublesome area. Normal Modes found that the application required very little information to create an account, but much more data was required before a user could actually start making appointments. Normal Modes recommended that Acuity capture more information at the start – where users expect it. We also suggested providing some guided instructions, a "checklist" of required setup steps that clearly outlines what the user has completed and what still needs attention.

Provided direction on accepted user experience guidelines

Not only did Normal Modes review the big picture items, we also helped Acuity bring its product in line with accepted usability principles. We addressed simple, easy-to-fix issues such as user cues (link colors, page titles), navigation layout, and best practices for interactive forms.