Machine-Tooling Interaction Design
Creating a new User Experience
The goal of this project was to study the traditional machine-tooling interfaces and users journeys to design a digital and more simplified user experience.
We started with user research to learn about the whole process using the machine, where we learned:
·The tasks to set-up the machine are not lineal. Users do not always follow the same steps.
·They have to control and consider a bunch of commands and buttons.
·Interfaces are overwhelming and not intuitive.
·There are other users besides operators that interact or could interact with the machine; maintenance staff and managers.
·The experience will be different depending on the user role / stakeholders in contact with the machine and the data generated.
Learning what referents in the industry and competitors were doing was a good starting point and inspiration to have a foundation for our design.
The research helped to identify the end to end user journey and the how integrate the stakeholders in the process. This information was mapped in a User Journey Map and helped to discover areas of opportunity comparating the features existent in the market in other digital interfaces.
We mapped how different functions connected to each other in a information architecture flow to organize the hierarchy of functions and steps of the experience.
Later we researched how different digital interfaces expose the information in workflows that guide users through the process. We wanted to provide users total control setting up the machine, as well as feedback of which part of the process and the remaining checkmarks to complete the process.
There were also studied different ways of exposing and expressing data through UI to communicate users different states of the machine.
This resulted in the first wireframes to place and organize the different functions and screens.
First wireframes were produced and defined the general experience through the necessary different screens to carry out the task of setting up the machine and the visual feedback to communicate the states of the machine (working, stopped, warnings, etc).
To define the final screens we followed the visual branding codes to provide a consistent look and feel. The interface would give access to each different stakeholder with an optimized interface access for each of them.
Operators would have full control in the set up of the machine. Maintenance staff would have features dedicated to it and managers could have a way to track data of production.
