Sarah Harrison: Portfolio
Gantt Chart Redesign for Project Managers
Graphic Production, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Usability, User Experience, Web Applications
I designed the new look, including chrome, icons, and color palette, and worked with the development team to design great interactions and a stellar user experience.
interactive, online
I designed all new icons and button treatments on a shiny new chrome toolbar.
Charts and icons help project managers see resource availability at a glance.
Dialog boxes got a spiffy new look as well.
Baseline schedules let project managers compare different versions of the schedule as it changes over time.
Baselines can be added and deleted right from the sidebar, with an intuitive interface that appears on hover.
When I first started working at Daptiv, formerly eProject, I didn’t know a thing about Project Management software. I had a couple weeks to learn, then the designer in charge of the big new Gantt chart redesign project left for her honeymoon, and the team needed some UI design.
I quickly learned that a Gantt chart was a standard PM tool for visualizing and managing project schedules. The development team at Daptiv had just rewritten their years-old Gantt chart from scratch, and they needed to give it a fresh new face that matched their fresh, modern new brand.
Over the course of a few fast-paced weeks, I designed several style and interaction elements, including:
- the color palette
- chrome style
- button style
- icons for each tool on the toolbar
- interactions for hovering over and selecting tasks
- interactions for assigning users
- the dialog boxes
- error messages
- sidebars
- several charts, graphs, and indicator icons for various states
The new Gantt chart was met with “ooh”s and “aah”s at the company meeting when it was presented, being an impressive step up from the ancient and dull Gantt chart they had gotten used to over the years. In addition to better representing the company’s brand and being much easier to use, the new Gantt chart also allowed the marketing team to finally declare the product cross-browser and cross-platform compatible, as the old Gantt chart only worked in Internet Explorer on Windows operating systems.