Reducing the complexity for testers to setup new tools for their work with state of the art measurement software
Role:
UX Designer/Researcher
Services:
Wireframing, prototyping, User research & usability testing
The task
As part of my current role as a UX designer at Kistler, I am involved in the complete redesign of an older generation of measurement software that is used by the global measurement device industry in sectors such as automotive, aviation, power tool manufacturing, and healthcare manufacturers.
The software assists testers and administrators in a factory or laboratory setting to determine whether certain tools used for fixing and mounting components in vehicle assembly are capable and up to standard for their daily job.
As the sole UX designer on the project, I was tasked to design a new set of screens and UI that would enable test administrators to set up and configure new or existing tools in accordance with international safety standards and store them within the software database.
The background and history of the software
The measurement software itself is highly sophisticated and was developed way back in the late 1990s in Germany with teams of highly experienced academics and engineers. Since that time it has morphed into a tool that offers long-term customers and experienced users a lot of interesting capabilities. Despite the software offering a lot of versatility, it is not without its problems.
The previous software is favored by existing customers, who are comfortable with the current functionality. However, Kistler’s business leaders want to open the software up to new customers, and the state of the software at the moment is very complex and outdated and lacks a decent UX, thus making it a hard sell to new customers and thus there is a need for a new version of the software to be built.
As the main UX designer in the team, my role involves speaking to customers, at all levels, understanding their needs in their job and their pains, and working to build an intuitive solution that ensures they can work smoothly and with little to no problems.
Pattern libraries used throughout the project ...
My inputs on this project were focused between speaking to users, product owners and other stakeholders with technical knowledge, then making use of our internal UI library to ensure my solutions were consistent with Kistler UI guidelines, some of these can be seen below.
Customer visits & understanding
As we already have established relationships with several customers, it made sense for me to speak to three of our customers that required the need to set up tools in conjunction with ISO standards.
The most important customer for us is the tool manufacturer because they mainly conduct their tests according to international ISO standards.
Getting out on the road to Southern Barvaria and visiting our customers in Germany, namely in Augsburg, Regensburg and Erlangen helped us build up suitable user personas that we can use and further refine for other aspects of feature development.
I went ahead and spoke to all three of our key customers with these profiles to gather their wishes and desires when integrating such a feature as ISO6789 into their tools. In general, they all told me the same thing that they wanted an easy way to configure this with a series of logical steps providing information when needed. I worked on the concept of building a wizard to allow our customers to simply add the ISO6789 configuration to their tool. This idea came to me in part because the concept was being used successfully on other projects in the company. It, therefore, made sense to use the design we have in the design system and then modify it for the specifics of this project.
Initial solutions (after several iterations with our product owner and product manager)
Some considerations that follow a wizard like format that were implemented before testing with the user.
Usability testing findings
- The user was confused when presented with the 'create new tool' and 'setup evaluation' options because it wasn't clear if this was a next step in the process or not. We realised that the design lacked consistency in terms of the 'wizard' like feel and needed to be better restructured to avoid ambiguity.
- Certain terminology was unclear to our users, so this required the use of more tooltips, short inline explanations to explain the meaning of a term as well as the result of it's actions.
- A consideration for touchscreen devices was given thought to as well as how the tooltips would work for this environment.
- Even though the flow allowed the user to add an ISO or VDI standard for a tool, the user gave us insights about wishing to add mutliple standards for one tool.
- The message added about a parameter known as statistical parameters was lacking prominence in the screen and needed to be rethought regarding it's positioning.
- Many points we had considered were luckily implemented due to our strong research and understanding of customers needs at the start of the project.
Feedback from our customers after implementation
The changes that were implemented from the user after the testing session were met with positive results. Our users greatly appreciated being involved in the process of the design and creation of such a feature and thanked us for taking all of their points into careful consideration.
Furthermore, even though not all requests were implemented many of these requests will be gradually implemented throughout the course of the lifespan of the product. I feel I have helped to make the life of our users much easier and to save them time when setting up a new tool according to an important evaluation standard.
Lessons learned
I am learning a lot from this project, specifically the sheer amount of domain knowledge I have to acquire, but more importantly, understanding how to better filter through complex requirements and build intuitive software with a complex interface yet is easy to use.
I feel the project acheived success, yet there is more that can be done to better understand the lives of our users by scoping out new opportunities. I feel this can be best achieved by more future field studies to better understand the needs and problems of our users, something that until now is difficult given the industry and various restrictions.