Design Process
Research
Feedback from Weekly UX Meetings
Regularly hosted UX meetings to gather feedback from stakeholders, developers, and engineers. These sessions provided valuable insights into user pain points, technical feasibility, and potential design improvements.
Collaboration Through Team Workspace
Shared designs within the team workspace to facilitate open feedback loops. Engineers and developers provided critical input on design constraints and technical requirements, ensuring alignment between design and implementation.
User-Centered Iterations
Incorporated feedback from engineers and developers into the design process, resulting in iterative improvements that addressed user workflows, improved accessibility, and simplified data visualization.
Stakeholder Alignment
Worked closely with stakeholders to ensure the designs aligned with business goals and met the needs of oil engineers. These collaborative efforts shaped the final product to be both user-friendly and effective for decision-making.
Prototype Testing
Testing Approach
Conducted usability testing during weekly UX meetings and within the team workspace. Prototypes were shared with developers, engineers, and stakeholders to gather actionable feedback.
Validation Process
• Tested workflows to ensure the designs addressed user pain points and aligned with business goals.
• Iterated on prototypes based on feedback, refining user flows, interactions, and data visualization features.
Outcome
Successfully validated design decisions before implementation, ensuring a seamless handoff to the development team.
• Pushed successful designs to DevOps for further development and deployment, maintaining consistency across the team.
Wireframes
Purpose
Created wireframes in Figma to establish the foundational structure of the user interface. These served as a blueprint for the platform’s design, focusing on key user workflows and functionality.
Process
• Designed low-fidelity wireframes to explore layout options and streamline navigation paths for oil engineers.
• Iterated on wireframes based on feedback from stakeholders, ensuring alignment with user needs and technical requirements.
• Incorporated annotations to provide developers with clear guidance on interactions and behaviors.
Key Outcomes
• Ensured the design process began with clarity and focus, minimizing guesswork in later stages. • Facilitated team discussions and decision-making, enabling faster iteration cycles.
• Established a strong foundation for transitioning to high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
Challenges and Solutions
Challenge 1: Simplifying Complex Workflows
The platform required transforming intricate data sets and workflows into a user-friendly interface for oil engineers. The initial designs were overwhelming, making it difficult for users to visualize and interact with their data.
Solution
• Conducted user interviews and gathered feedback during weekly UX meetings to understand the critical pain points.
• Broke down workflows into smaller, manageable tasks to simplify navigation.
• Designed clear visual hierarchies and interactive elements to guide users intuitively through the platform.
• Collaborated with developers to ensure technical feasibility while maintaining simplicity.
Challenge 2: Balancing Technical Requirements with Usability
Designing for oil engineers required balancing technical data visualization needs with intuitive design principles, while ensuring alignment with development constraints.
Solution
• Regularly engaged with engineers and stakeholders to align on functionality requirements.
• Iterated on wireframes and prototypes based on their feedback, ensuring both usability and technical feasibility.
• Created a design system to maintain consistency while addressing specific technical requirements.
Results and Impact
Quantitative results
Increased Workflow Efficiency
The redesign reduced the time it took engineers to navigate and analyze data.
Improved Adoption Rates
The user-friendly interface led to a significant rise in adoption.
Reduced Errors
Enhanced visual clarity and simplified workflows resulted in arelated to data interpretation.
Qualitative results
User Feedback
Engineers praised the intuitive design and interactive data visualization tools.
Stakeholder Response
Stakeholders highlighted the design system as a key factor in maintaining consistency and streamlining future updates, with positive feedback about the collaborative process.
Team Collaboration Impact
Developers appreciated the clarity provided by the prototypes and design system, which reduced back-and-forth and accelerated implementation.
What went well
Collaborative Process
Hosting weekly UX meetings fostered collaboration and ensured alignment between designers, developers, and stakeholders. This approach streamlined decision-making and allowed for continuous feedback, leading to a stronger final product.
Simplifying Complexity
Successfully transformed a highly technical and complex system into an intuitive interface. By breaking workflows into smaller tasks and leveraging clear visual hierarchies, the design became significantly more user-friendly for oil engineers.
Effective Prototyping
Interactive prototypes built in Figma enabled efficient testing and validation of design ideas. These prototypes provided clarity for developers, reducing rework during the implementation phase.
Design System Creation
Establishing a comprehensive design system not only ensured visual and functional consistency across the platform but also accelerated the development process by providing developers with a clear, reusable set of components.
Positive Feedback
Stakeholders and users provided overwhelmingly positive feedback about the redesign, highlighting the usability improvements and the clarity of the new data visualization tools.
Tools
Figma
Utilized Figma for designing wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and interactive prototypes. Its collaborative features allowed seamless feedback from stakeholders and efficient handoff to developers.
Microsoft Teams
Leveraged Teams for hosting weekly UX meetings, gathering feedback, and maintaining open communication with developers, engineers, and stakeholders. The shared workspace enabled real-time collaboration and ensured alignment across the team.
What I Would Do Differently
Earlier Developer Collaboration
While collaboration with developers was productive during the later stages, involving them earlier in the design process could have identified technical constraints sooner and minimized adjustments during implementation.
More User Testing
Conducting more usability tests with a diverse group of oil engineers earlier in the project could have provided deeper insights into their workflows, leading to even more tailored design solutions.
Streamlining Feedback Cycles
While feedback from stakeholders and team members was invaluable, refining the process to consolidate input more efficiently could have reduced the time spent revisiting certain design elements.
Expanding Accessibility Features
Although the platform was designed to be user-friendly, focusing more on accessibility features—support for different screen sizes or specialized visualization tools—could have broadened its usability.
Enhanced Prototyping Tools
While Figma was effective, exploring more advanced prototyping tools for simulating complex data interactions could have made testing and validation even smoother.
