Client
Building Analytics Company
Duration
1 Month (Nov 2020)
My Role
User researcher, heuristic analysis, workshop team lead, lo-fi prototyping.
Tools
Figma, Stormboard
Guide a 6-person team through a design workshop to research and design better ways for energy utilities managers maintain their buildings.
Providing more detail to the user in less space by leveraging design patterns like drawers and trendines.
Our redesigns to the existing analytic system provides the user with more context around what is wrong with each piece of equipment. This allows them to take more appropriate, proactive action.
Diagnostics tabs with additional filters, contextual information (like fault descriptions), and timeline visualizations.
After using a set of filters to drilldown into subsets of equipment, users can find more context in fault specific panel, including:
Discovery Research
Interviewed 5 casual TED fans to learn more about how they use TED.com and find videos.
Workshop
Explored design opportunities based on insights and pain-points uncovered in discovery research.
Prototyping
Evaluated solutions for an index page redesign by conducting think-alouds with 3 users.
Usability Testing
Evaluated solutions for an index page redesign by conducting think-alouds with 3 users.
In most facilities, energy managers are responsible for the maintenance of buildings. If a cooling fan in a building breaks, they are the ones who have to assign a technician to fix it.
Our client's software helps these managers by placing sensors in the equipment and flagging potential problems or faults in each piece. However, keeping track of literally hundreds of data points can be a difficult job.
In a world increasingly threatened by infectious diseases and climate change, how might we redesign this software to better assist energy managers in creating healthy and sustainable indoor environments?
Our client initially approached us to assist them in redesigning their current platform. They were attempting to implement redesigns that would enable their users to interact with building data in more detail. However, having not done so before, they wanted assistance implementing a user-centered process.
Before we got started designing, we knew we had to engage in some generative research to establish a common foundation amongst both of our teams.
From this research, we learned the largest pain points come from compiling lists of faults and equipment that recur at certain points of the year and seeing additional context or detail (such as historical or related information) around particular faults.
Methods:
User Interviews
We spoke with 5 users to understand how the system is used and what pain points currently exist.
Heuristic Evaluation
Evaluated the current website using Neilsen-Norman's 10 Heuristics to develop an understanding of how the system works and how it can be improved.
To dig deeper into our findings, as well as teach our client about the design process, we hosted a 5-day design workshop with them. I lead one of the two teams, guiding them through activities like journey mapping and storyboarding.
Journey Mapping
My team charted an energy manager's typical day, noting where the diagnostic tool appears and where pain points occur.
Storyboarding
Using the journey map, we sketched a scene depicting how our solutions could improve an energy manager's day.
To implement the ideas we generated during the workshop, we went through two rounds of prototyping. We began with low-fidelity sketches and ended with mid- to high-fidelity clickable prototypes.
I created the lo-fis and some of the mid-fis. In addition, I led the client walkthroughs of these designs.
Low Fidelity
Medium Fidelity
High Fidelity
To verify our prototypes, we led 4 users through a guided walkthrough of the designs. Our client was sensitive to showing existing customers a prototype version of their platform. Therefore, our team gave them more power in who they could recruit for studies.
I created the protocol and led the sessions.
Our research objectives:
Research Strategy:
Users found related information such as date, scale, and history valuable. Graphs should be used more to depict this data.
Other insights:
The client wanted guidance for how to proceed with future designs. Our prototypes comprised of changes similar to their current paradigm. However, at the direction of the client, we also explored more ambitious designs. These involved a new interaction scheme that was closer to pro-level software like that made by Adobe.
