TechCore

Eleken designed an intuitive software management platform for small and middle business

REX, an investment ecosystem backing over ten real estate tech startups, faced a growing workload for developers. Looking for a software management platform, they discovered existing solutions targeted enterprise-scale businesses. As a medium-sized business, REX felt these solutions were not meeting their needs and budget. So they decided to create such a platform on their own to ensure their developers could code efficiently. As there was no similar solution on the market, REX had no direct competitors. But they only had a vague idea of how such a platform needs to look like.

With this idea, they came to Eleken. Our designers had to not only design some screens but also define the product, its goal, structure, and so on. For designers, it's quite a difficult task. But it didn't scare us, so we stepped in, and the work on the TechCore platform began.

Diving into market analysis to define the necessary features

Since all indirect competitors are all enterprise-grade, they are 1) too expensive for smaller companies and 2) have robust functionalities and customization options, but they are all hard to use and navigate. The TechCore team wanted their platform to be as easy and intuitive as possible so the developers could focus on coding without worrying about anything else.

To help achieve this goal, Eleken's first step was market research and competitor analysis.

Our designer had to:

Get a solid grasp of the niche, which was a challenge on its own since developers' infrastructure is not something a layperson encounters in their daily life;
Analyze the structure and the features of the enterprise-grade apps;

Analyze the feedback to these apps to think of what we can do better;
Conduct the user interviews to understand what features were vital and what we could do without;
Decide on the minimal list of features we should focus on and, as a result, on the app's future structure.

Once all the data was gathered, our designer was able to move to, well, actually designing the app. So, what did she create?

Our designer decided on specific features' look and feel

The design process was iterative in the strictest sense: after every step, Eleken designer had to get user feedback to check whether she was moving in the right direction. With user needs at the forefront of her mind, our designer came up with unique features' design and ensured the design defined and boosted the functionality.

The workspace to switch seamlessly between different organizations and projects

The projects' board emerged initially from the specific needs of REX developers working on multiple startups. However, it will also come in handy for other in-house and freelance developers with different projects in progress.

While the design is very minimalistic, dividing the projects into different blocks with borders allows to differentiate them visually at first glance. Using both icons and labels for "apps" and "environments" also allows to present vital information in an approachable way.

Different tabs, one window for all the work

Unlike competitors, TechCore allows developers to do all the work they need and monitor the apps in one window with different tabs without opening a new window every time. This accelerates the work speed significantly, and it is one of the features the users were most excited about.

The screen is divided into three sections with distinct labels. Considering the white background, violet buttons, as well as borders and highlighted links stand out immediately. This allows the users to navigate the page easily without compromising the minimalistic look.

Many developers prefer to work in dark mode, so the logs page is customizable, and the user can choose either light or dark mode.

The recent activity sidebar also allows users to monitor the state of the apps and their teammates' actions if working in a team without getting distracted from their current tasks.

Eleken designed a developer tool that makes it easy to focus on current tasks

Designing tools for software developers is quite a specific niche. As devs were using software long before thinking about UX became a thing, many contemporary tools are very complicated. But in close collaboration with Eleken, TechCore managed to create a tool that is so easy to use it's almost unbelievable.

Get a solid grasp of the niche, which was a challenge on its own since developers' infrastructure is not something a layperson encounters in their daily life;
Analyze the structure and the features of the enterprise-grade apps;