03 Develop Design Guidelines

Goal: “Develop a design guideline which supports developers creating new modules for openIMIS. By implementing the guideline the User Experience and Interface will be consistent, accessible and easy to understand.“

Content

01 Guideline Content

As the guideline will focus the implementation of new openIMIS modules, the content will be prepared for new joining developers. Therefore, the guideline will provide short information on the AS-IS Situation, current UX/UI Challenges and its objectives. (01 Introduction to openIMIS Design)

Considering the potentials and problems from the UX/UI analysis, the content will include a short paragraph about general principles to ensure that all developers are following the same thinking when starting with a new openIMIS module. This subject will include principles like consistency, user centered design or design frameworks. (02 General principles)

The third topic will include the already developed branding strategy. This will be moreover a collection of confluence pages or other input documents on how the current user interface was built. Therefore, the section will give a quick intro into the existing content relating to UX/UI in openIMIS (03 Branding overview)

The next chapter will start to focus on the actual content. As one of the main topics for the user experience, this section will include the navigation strategy of openIMIS. Therefore, a strategy will be proposed which will have a consistent, recognizable and self-explaning navigation principle. While openIMIS can be considered as a information system, the navigation will focus on the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations.
(04 Navigation Guide)

Also closer to the actual content will be section 5. Its about already in-use UI Components and the right way how to use them. It will also include a guiding approach on how to create new UI Components and implement them into the whole openIMIS design strategy. This will be important to still have a consistent user interface even tough new controls and visuals are introduced. (05 UI-Component Guide)

The last chapter will talk about accessibility and how to develop a user interface which will be easy to use for all users. Thats why, best practices and guidance on how to implement accessible components will be introduced. (06 Accessibility Guide)

02 Challenges & Opportunities

By introducing a design guideline openIMIS has the chance to streamline frontend developments. It will help to improve consistency as well as the overall user experience. Developers will focus on the already given UI Components and include the navigation strategy into their new modules. openIMIS has therefore the chance to grow its modules step-by-step without worrying about a messy, not consistet user interface.

On the other side will the guideline only provide a basic approach on how to design a new openIMIS module. As there is no governance implemented, it is still possible to implement a complete, none compliant module with own navigation and components. Therefore, it would be an idea to implement a design review into the development of new modules.