UX/UI DESIGNER at Elevat
Company size:
10 - 15 employees
Responsibilities
UX Design Lead, User Research, UI Design, Visual Design, Mobile, Front End
Website
How can we help people in the Industrial IoT space make actionable decisions from the data on their machines?
Elevat is an Industrial IoT company. It may seem like just another buzzword, (trust me im tired of them too) but there were lots of valuable use cases for design to step in. There was room to make industrial machines more productive, cost effective, and even sustainable.
Working at Elevat was hectic, but fun. The industrial machine space is years behind on technology, so the runway for improvement was long. Companies generally didn’t know what solutions they needed, or even how to articulate the issues they're facing.
Thats where I came in. I needed to design a product, in an emerging space, where design didn’t exist. Oh boy, here we go.
"HOW CAN WE HELP PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRIAL IOT SPACE, MAKE
ACTIONABLE DECISIONS FROM THE DATA ON THEIR MACHINES?"
In Fall 2018, I joined Elevat as the first Designer on a mission to improve my Design chops, and help make a small IoT company a success. The company was comprised mostly of people who'd worked at Hitachi for a few years in their IoT division. They were all knowledgeble, talented people with plenty of helpful experience to help immerse me in the problems they were trying to solve.
Basically, the Industrial space is a challenging one to design for. Innefficiencies are abundant, and often, thats an accepted fact. Proficiency with modern applications and systems is lower than in consumer applications.
Some general questions users at Industrial companies may have are: When was my machine last serviced? How long has my machine been offline? How can I control my machine without being there? How can I increase my productivity? Hell, Where is my machine?
Many of these problems go beyond an IoT solution. Habits and users behaviors in this space are engrained, and hard to break out of. However most of the IoT products out there don't provide much value other than just being boring dashboards no one wants to stare at.
Problem
The above graphic shows the design process I went through during my time at Elevat.
When I joined, the old UI wasn't in great shape. The Information Architecture was jumbled, there was no visual heirarchy, and the grayscale...
😳
Initial Research and Exploration
My first task was to truly understand the problem I was trying to solve. There were so many pain points in the Industrial Machine space. Forklifts, Backhoes, even Apple tree-shakers were all machines I needed to understand. It took me about a month to talk to team members, and research different directions the industry was headed. I led brainstorming exercises to get insights out of different stakeholders. We asked questions like: What are some common pain points in the Industrial space? What kinds of people deal with these problems? In an ideal world, how would software like this work? These are some of our high level findings:
In an ideal system, people don't want to do anything. Monitoring, then being able to make an actionable decision is ideal.
Time is precious in this industry. People need to get immediate insight into their data, and make decions based on that. How many hours does this machine have? When do I need to change the filter? etc.
Lack of visibility into how a machine is doing.
Generally, people don't have any insight into when maintenance needs to be done, how the parts are holding up, and the inventory of those parts. The process of ordering parts is more reactive than proactive. Its all a scramble to prevent big breakdowns that cost thousands.
There are multiple personas in a company. Those people care about different things.
Sales, Marketing, Executives, and Engineers are just a few of the personas that are at Industrial companies. Because of the fast paced nature of the job, and low technological proficiencies, people generally just want things to get done and work.
The industry is pretty far behind the latest design and software trends. Its common for companies to run decades old software and use excel sheets.
Yea...
Many companies manually log hours on machines and parts.
Digitizing Maintenance is something e a lot of companies are excited about.
At the same time, we explored different conceptual directions, and multiple user flows for a system redesign:
IDEATION
Early designs.
Once a solid Information Architecture structure was decided on, I iterated quickly on many different designs for the Maps, Inventory, and Settings pages. Many meetings were held frequently to get feedback and outside perspectives on the designs. In about a 2 month timeframe, we were happy with a design we wanted to move forward with.
nope.
Understanding the Users Journey
hmmm…
Thats more like it!
Over the next 9 months, understanding users became even more central to the design decisions. There were a number of ways the product could go, but I needed to do lots of research with end users to help guide the product design. I did a competitive analysis on the competition, held more brainstorming meetings around features with stakeholders, and did more user interviews.
Whats the most valuable thing to a user?
Their Assets
Great, then that’ll be the centerpiece of our product.
The data users want from their machines revolved around each individual asset. A single tractor. A single backhoe.
Location, maintenance, reporting, and other features could all be designed with assets at the center. This way, the data’s more actionable, users understand its purpose, and their mental model aligns with the real world. 👍
DESIGNS
Each iteration of the design was fast. Its a startup. Customers always asked for new features, and market research led us in new directions.
I used Adobe XD to build prototypes and organize my designs. With the Creative Cloud as my home, me, a UX Design Intern (thanks Esther 😀 ), and a team of around 7 developers iterated around these designs.
Style Guide
Oh yea. Among other things, I made a style guide
VALIDATIONS AND OUTCOMES
Customers were excited when we showed them these designs. More importantly, they could see how the platform would integrate into their current workflows and solve some of the problems they're looking to eliminate.
The Industrial IoT space is still very far behind the technological proficiency of the consumer space, so getting companies to get on board will undoubtedly take years to fully adopt. Many companies run their machines until they break, or don't pay too much mind to maintaining their machines health.
Not only would Elevat be a good solution to improve a companies efficiency and reduce downtime, it would be a great platform to help control emissions on this planet we live on. Just a bit though.