D'Harmoni Telco Infra

Mobile App

November 2022

Summary

An enterprise SaaS with existing user base has many different modules for managing Projects, Maintenance, Finance, Landlord and Backhaul monitoring. A mobile app version specific for the Maintenance module is required. 

My Role

User Analysis, Wireframing, Prototyping

The Problem

While other departments were making progress and taking advantage of the new found efficiency, the maintenance department was having little to no utilization of the desktop solution.

We probed further by interviewing the department staff and came out with these findings:

1. Like other departments, dealing with third party vendors are a norm. But the nature is very different. Maintenance department deals with break fixes that are time sensitive and logistically complicated.

2. Too many cross checking is required during live operations that can cause confusions and drag downtime. At it's current state, WhatsApp Groups is being heavily relied on.

3. Site entry depends on multiple approvals and almost being bypassed all of the time using high urgency as justification. Majority of the time the problem has been resolved by the contractor even before the issue was notified. This caused major report reconciliation that is time consuming in light of audit.

4. Discrepancy is a major issue as sites are spread across the whole state and there's hardly a solid solution to verify if any work was done at the said date, time and location. This caused issue for finance department to verify and proceed with clearing invoices.

5. Getting live updates on urgent cases are always in high latency as the team is active in a 24 hour shift and HQ had to wait the the person in charge of a case to file in a report.

Here's a look at what the maintenance department staff had to use while working on-site: 

Research & Findings

So the first thing on the list is the mobile dashboard. As the first thing displayed right after login, it serves as the central hub for all the features and functions of the app. It should provide quick and easy way for users to access the most important features of the app. 

Mobile features that onsite users are requesting :

1. log a faulty report

2. log time of site entry with geo-fencing

3. take photo to validate the faulty report with date/timestamp

4. update the report until issue is rectified with date/timestamp 

Design Process

Coming up with the design of the app moving forward is heavily based on the previous group interview session. 

The dashboard is now minimal, but also gives a clear overview on the situation. Categorization is grouped by severity and tapping into any one of the colored boxes shows the number for each client. 

Creating a new issue is made simpler just by carrying over the form from the desktop design, but only the basic information is required. All other supplementary information will be added on later by the technician later onsite. 

Information is displayed with a clear card format with an action button placed right inside it for when the technician is already onsite and ready to work on the issue. 

The app not only stamps the date and time, but also automatically stamps the user ID, so if there is always a reference point to go back to within the info log component itself. This will improve security audit if there are any further investigations necessary.

Since the mobile app is focused on high severity cases that is very time sensitive, the permission for site entry has to be drastically improved. Instead of painstakingly request HQ to give approval for entry, the app will utilize a site QR code instead. 

Once the technician has entered the site, a new component is created logging the entry detail. They can now use the camera to take a photo of the issue verifying the faulty report.

This process can be repeated as many times as required to give a clear understanding to everyone working on the issue until it is rectified by the technician and later verified by the client.

The issue will be cleared from the mobile dashboard once the status is set to resolved, and later marked as closed by a designated admin from HQ back in the desktop environment.