Verksamt – To-do list while starting a business

1. To get a personalized to-do list, the user gives information about the company they are about to start. In this step they choose what industry they are in. This user has chosen “Food, drinks and lodging”.
2. The web site presents a to-do list. There are links to other web services that needs to be completed. Some of those services are part of verksamt.se, some are hosted on other web sites.
3. The user completes a web service at another web site. This shows a confirmation from another web site that the registration of the refrigeration room is complete. This web site refers the user back to verksamt.se.
4. The service concept also includes a calendar that shows important dates for the startup. The green box to the right shows details about the date chosen.
5. The web site is responsive and works well on mobile devices. Here is the calendar and the details of the chosen date.

A colleague from an earlier project had a vision of a new service on the website verksamt.se. The web site is a collaborative service provided by several Swedish authorities and has the goal of being a “one stop shop” for registering a business in Sweden. The vision of the service was to present a personalized to-do list after the user had filled in a form about their business. My colleague was going to present his vision to the steering committee and thus he needed help visualizing the idea. I had two constraints: the idea had to be presented in the style of the current websites and the material had to be done in three days.

Approach

I was previously involved in the website design and had some basic knowledge of the users of the service. The tight deadline made it necessary to start visualizing the idea right away. Over a couple of days I:

Visualized a storyboard of the new service concept.
I started by making simple sketches of all screens that the client wanted in his presentation. Once the rough design was decided I used the code from the existing web sites to quickly create new pages to illustrate the service. I manipulated the HTML and CSS to create pages that fit into the design of the current web sites.
Collaborated closely with the client, programmer and graphic designer.
Since we were working so quickly, I communicated changes with the client throughout the process. This was to assure sign off as we went along and to avoid any surprises at the end. The quick sketches I did were important in make this communication efficient. I collaborated with one of our programmers to get help with the most time consuming parts of the coding. He used the sketches as a guide and I came in after he finished with some detail refinement. I delegated the icon design and some basic artwork to one of our graphic designers.

Personal learnings

It was fun taking on the design challenge of a project with a quick turnaround. Working on my skills of visualizing a user scenario, coding HTML and CSS and managing a team under a tight deadline was a great opportunity. It was also interesting to work with the design of the different websites and create something that fits with the current concept, rather than making up my own.