Creating the UX/UI for welding automation software
I spearheaded the design of Autometrics' inspection automation dashboard interface that lead to the company's acceptance into 3 additional incubator programs
THEMES
Product Design
Product Validation
Research and Prototyping
Front-end development
TOOLS
Figma
React
TEAM
Mechanical Engineer
Software Developer
Front-end Developer
CEO
UI/UX Designer (me)
TIMELINE
6 Months
November 2020 - March 2021
Human inspection is unreliable
Welding inspection is still human-dependent: 90% of the inspection is done after parts are manufactured this causes profit losses, rework costs and production delay.
In 2020, I joined Autometrics' mighty team of 6 to design, testa and develop their new welding inspection software Dashboard: Inspection 4.0
Autometrics streamlines the manufacturing process by automating inspectuion using AI and machine intelligence to decrease human inspection error thereby maximizing efficiency for manufacturing tycoons.
Hmm here are my parameters
Sourcing from our internal stakeholders, I tested the initial dashboard to find many accessibility and usability issues that inhibit users from accessing full capabilities of the software.
Unclear Status Bar
The existing platform had very low accessibility with their status indicator at the top left corner. The status shown “normal, spattering, fragmented” is in low contrast with the video background.
Ambiguous indicators
The process status indicators were presented using standard button UI. Users were confused whether these elements were actionable.
Confusing Icons and CTA
Users did not understand the difference between the icon and “equipment” button. They felt the two were redundant and they did not have a way to leave the current dashboard screen.
Inconsistent Coloring
The dashboard, built from bootstraps pre-built themes, had inconsistent colors with the brand identity.
Who will be using the Dashboard?
Since we were bound by NDA constraints, I was not able to outsource external primary users. With this constraint in mind, I performed competitive analysis, secondary research and internal stakeholder interviews to create a customer archetype table detailing our target personas. I was able to understand both business and user objectives to create a solution that satisfies both parties.
Buyer
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Do not directly interact with the software but oversees overall operation of the manufacturing process
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Mainly concerned with profitability
Recommender
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Primary users - would be the ones using the software to optimize their inspection process.
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Mainly concerned with saving time, money and performing well at their job.
Organization of this dashboard is key.
Enter Information Architecture...
To better understand the core capabilities to showcase in the new design and understand the scope of the project, I created an information architecture to display the number of screens to design and the types of elements that would live on each screen using the pre-existing design.
After my research I had gathered sufficient amounts of insight and data to craft the ideal solution for our target users. I decided to focus on individual components before aggregating into one interface. Through my research I concluded that having drop down modals are not an efficient way to display information so working alongside the CEO and development team, we decided to use the standard widescreen desktop ratio to showcase all Inspection 4.0’s core capabilities.
In other words, let's break it down even more...
Re-usable component library
Grid system to ensure easy hand-off to Dev team
So how successful was Inspection 4.0?
Last month we discovered there were some defects in our weld and because it was not detected during the process, we had to redo almost all the project (rework); it cost us $600K. With Autometrics, our manufacturing line is much more reliable: we can know about defects before the part has to be reworked or worse be scrapped, creating significant cost savings.
- Quality Engineer at Marcon
+3
Acceptance into incubator programs
Measured by marketing team outreach and product pitches
Concluding thoughts
As the sole UI/UX designer in an engineer heavy startup I learned the importance of flexibility, confidence, collaboration, and keeping the integrity of a user-centered mindset while designing. I had the opportunity to work alongside talented individuals and interface with coworkers who had different perspectives on product development then I was initially trained.
Not only was I designing with the user in mind, I was also taking the developer and business goals into consideration when crafting my solution. Although I did not have access to our target users, I gathered great insight from our internal stakeholders. If I could change one thing about the process of this project, I would like to focus more on usability testing, interfacing with potential customers and collecting data. This project highlighted the importance of a UI/UX designer as the bridge between business and users and I'm excited to leverage my growth at Autometrics and apply it to my next challenge.