I like how seemingly easily Mixmax combines many functions. Of course, broad functionality always comes with a price. This document describes a few of my ideas on how to deal with this problem.

Making the right first impression is especially important for complex products, whose complexity might be overwhelming for some people.

Navigation Panel

There are a few things that might confuse new users:

• The amount of menu items creates an impression of the system’s complexity.
• Visual equality of menu items makes it harder for people to create a mind map of the system.

Improvement suggestions:

• Maybe some items could be hidden
  • Branding could be moved inside Settings because it won’t be changed often.
  • What’s new could be replaced with an announcement modal.
• A few groups of items will help people easier navigate through them
  • Feeds and updates group: Live Feed + Reports + Tasks + Contacts
  • Email group: Outbox + Email Templates
  • Automation group: Rules + Sequences
  • Settings group: Groups + Settings + Resources
• Move ℹ️ from the panel inside the corresponding pages

Pages

Although every page is different and has its own specifics, it is possible to define general principles:

• Progressive complexity: don’t show controls that are useless for the user at the current moment:

  

  In this example, filters and members could be hidden because there is no content.

• CTAs shouldn’t compete with each other. Firstly because it makes people doubt if different buttons do the same. Secondly, a single color spot attracts much more attention than multiple.

  

  An automatic consequence of following the principle of progressive complexity is that empty pages might have a different layout than pages with content.

• Subtitles are useful in providing context while not distracting users:

  

• Placeholder is a powerful tool. It attracts users’ attention and helps them to create a mental map of a system. That’s why it’s better to use proper mini-illustrations rather than general icons:

  

• Splitting content between tabs is often better than having a long page. I faced this problem during my work at Everytale: users were scared of a long page. Spreading content between tabs not only reduced users’ frustration but provided us with the flexibility to add more fields and to adapt user flow on the go:

  

  The same approach might be applied to screens like Calendars.

These are just a few of the ideas I’ve got after a brief platform check. Checking job stories and analytics would open the way for much deeper and much more impressive optimizations.

<aside> 👨‍💻

My name is Anthony I’m a designer with 9+ years of experience in product design and 7 years in engineering and analysis. I worked with startups from Y Combinator and 500 Global when I created innovative products from the ground up and revitalized legacy designs.

</aside>