Groupe Muller

The interface resembles an e-commerce catalog. The customer must easily access the information they are looking for about a specific product. The navigation must be intuitive. When the customer is using the tablet, they can be interrupted at any time or feel the urge to look at something else in the store. UX design is therefore a crucial element in keeping their attention. The home screen takes the form of a menu with 6 sections. “Our identity” for example allows access to information about the brand's strengths, such as French manufacturing and research and development strategy. If you click on “Our range,” you can then choose between different types of heaters (dry inertia, soft heat, towel warmer) and then discover the products in the selected range. For each heater, a product sheet presents the available colors and power levels, as well as a more detailed description and a photo.

"This tablet application will allow us to increase the visibility of our brands and make them more prominent within large multi-brand DIY stores."

Laure, Public Marketing and Communication Manager, Muller Group 

Another section, “Easy Installation,” provides access to a video that Hélène, our Motion designer, customizes for the Muller Group. The specifications are as follows: the video must give an overview of how to install the radiator and show customers that this installation is extremely simple. Hélène therefore creates a video in motion design, a format particularly suited to education and popularization. And since this video is viewed in the store and not at home, she imagines a very short capsule: 30 seconds. It showcases the 6 main installation steps with an explanatory sentence appearing each time as a large subtitle.

"Design aims for efficiency. This is a catalog application through which customers can easily browse the products and their features."

Bastien, Developer, 148 Agency Collective 

From a development perspective, the first challenge is to design a usable offline interface because the tablets are not connected to the Internet. It may not seem like much, but it changes everything! When developing in offline mode, you cannot have a server. Therefore, you have to find another way to store all the data directly on the application. The idea of Tai and Samuel, two of our developers, is to use the Yaml format, a programming language that allows for this integration of all site information, like a database. One must then be very attentive to the weight of the different files. Bastien, also a developer at the Agency, is therefore working on their optimization because, if the videos and photos are too heavy, they can slow down the application’s execution speed and thus negatively impact the user experience. Finally, without an Internet connection, there are no possible remote updates. Therefore, we cannot afford mistakes at the time of delivery. Otherwise, we will have to visit dozens of stores one by one to make the corrections.

"We only have positive feedback. It is a quality product for the stores that have installed more than we had imagined."

Laure, Public Marketing and Communication Manager, Muller Group

The second challenge is related to the tablets used by the Muller Group. Custom commercial tablets that have an older version of Android. Each time an operating system like Android evolves, it opens new possibilities and programming languages change to adapt. Working on a version from 2013 means adapting our code and modifying our way of working to provide our client with some innovations and the latest features. This is also the role of Agency 148: to adapt to the technical constraints of our clients while offering them a modern and efficient result.

"It's not just a service provided to clients; it's also a sales aid tool for salespeople."

Pauline, Project Manager, 148 Collective Agency 

Finally, these tablets must also be easy to use for salespeople. When they receive them, we provide a guide that allows them to install the application and get acquainted with this new tool. With around a hundred tablets provided in just a few weeks across France, it is very important that this document is clear and effective, so that the teams of the Muller Group can be quickly autonomous.