Unveiling the new user interface

At Safefood 360° we know that dealing with an array of food safety standards and trying to maintain compliance can feel overwhelming, so it is technology’s job to make that task easier and more intuitive. Food manufacturers shouldn’t have to spend their time worrying about their food safety management system, and instead focus on producing safe and quality products for their customers. Great technology which is well designed will contribute enormously to this endeavor. Good technology design is all about making the tech invisible to the point that you forget you’re even using it.

After carefully studying the usage patterns of our users it has become clear that Safefood 360° is being used more and more in production and remote environments on touch-based devices. Our company has rapidly grown, and the variety of different environments in which the software is now being used has kept increasing steadily. So we made the decision to redesign the user interface to support all these different use cases from production floor to the corner office and beyond.

This intensive user interface rebuild which was carried out over the past several weeks focused on three concepts, which also describe our design philosophy: functionality, simplicity, and supporting multiple use cases.

Functionality

Safefood 360° is, above all other things, an industrial tool – an instrument for achieving better food safety management. So the success of our user interface is not measured in how beautiful it is, but rather in its ability to facilitate your work effort and make your job more efficient and effective. Not only is Safefood 360° the most intuitive software in our industry, it is also the most comprehensive and robust software suite available for food safety compliance. Our number one design goal is and always has been to make it the superior tool for managing food safety.

Simplicity

Knowing how complicated food safety management and regulatory compliance can be, we set ourselves the goal that Safefood 360° will offer you unparalleled clarity and focus. We wanted to make our food safety management software as intuitive as it possibly can be.

To achieve this goal, we created a new streamlined design for the software and cut out all the clutter. All icons and graphics in the user interface have now been re-drawn with a consistent, flat style. It is hard to believe but the entire software is now built using only 10 colors, and nothing more.

Every element in the user interface – whether its a button, a title, or a text box – has been carefully scrutinized. Any visual elements that do not directly benefit or improve the user experience have been removed. The colors have been carefully selected to draw your attention to the right place. The result is a user interface that feels intuitive from the moment you first log in to the software.

Supporting multiple usage scenarios

Our research has revealed that an ever greater number of our clients are moving towards touch interfaces of one kind or another because they are mobile and highly suitable for factory conditions. On the other hand many people will still prefer to access software on their traditional desktop and laptop computers. To embrace this change, we redesigned many of the targets in the user interface to be bigger and easier to use without a mouse. As we did this, not only did the user experience on tablet computers improve, but feedback shows that our desktop users love the changes even more. The software is now easier to use no matter where you are, whether completing an internal audit on the production floor, or in the comfort of your office.

The work continues

The work on user experience is a continuous effort, and we’ll continue making changes in the future – there are still many things that we wish to improve. We hope our users will keep on sending their invaluable feedback, and we hope that the work we’ve carried out over the past couple of months will make managing food safety a little bit easier for all.