We’ve been working with Aligni for the past decade, helping them become the leading SaaS in the PLM and MRP space. By collaborating closely with their development team and the stakeholders on an ongoing basis in the staff augmentation setup, we’ve helped them shape their flagship SaaS product into a powerful but user-friendly piece of software, but we’ve also helped shape the brand of Aligni as well.

Challenges

It’s incredible how little attention design is given in engineering-dominant digital products. Most of the products treat design either as an afterthought, or as a second class citizen, which we saw as an opportunity to differentiate Aligni. A classic case of function over form we needed to reshape, and prove that design is a value-add, instead of pure decoration.

Designing for engineers is hard, first and foremost because they appreciate different aspects of design than what we as designers — and the general public, for that matter — traditionally tend to appreciate.

Solutions

The nature of the problem space and its users required our design team to study the needs of engineers when they use software, and gain perspective into the materials and tools they are using in their day-to-day. This insight provided us with the knowledge we needed to design — and continue to improve and build — a highly usable, although highly complex SaaS product.

More recently we were given space to rethink and redesign how the Aligni brand is perceived by the world. We’ve invested this budget into designing a new, much more mature visual identity, along with a new marketing website.

Aligni’s library of design mock-ups along with its design system became a true single source of truth for the UX of the product, which are assets relied upon by design, development, marketing, and their support teams.

Outcomes

4.5 score on Capterra with glowing reviews.

5.0 score on G2.

Figuring out a new approach to design as a true collaborative effort between design professionals, domain experts, and stakeholders was an eye-opening experience which reshaped our entire approach to digital product design, not just on this engagement. We consider it a badge of honor that Aligni SaaS product did not require a major redesign in the 10 years we’ve been working together. We’ve accomplished this by heavily investing in a solid foundation in terms of UX, and by making thoughtful design decisions by devoting time even to the seemingly unimportant aspects of the user experience.