WEDECO
WEDECO
We created a mobile experience to monitor and troubleshoot the UV and Ozone water treatment systems. This application reduces hazards significantly during the water treatment process.
Wedeco is a brand of Xylem manufacturer of ultraviolet water treatment systems worldwide and manufactures market-leading UV disinfection systems for municipal drinking water and wastewater, industrial process water and consumer applications.
Xylem Inc. (21.3 billion) is a world leader in developing innovative water solutions through smart technology in public utility, residential, commercial, agricultural, and industrial settings.
Research, analysis, solution design, design systems, user-testing.
1 UX designers, 1 product owner, , 1 delivery manager, 4 software engineers
November 2018 - May 2019
Problem Statement
How might the operators reduce the time and effort of monitoring the UV /ozone system?
How might the technician troubleshoot easier and mobile?
Research
Interview
Interviews were conducted with 2 groups of users (The operators and the technicians) who will be using the application.
This provided great insight into a typical user journey to discover where value can be added. Below presents a few quotes from the interview. I have done the contextual research by seeing how the operators and technician trouble shoot and their daily activity.
"Trouble shooting is difficult."
"I would like to compare related parameters"
"We may not know the meaning."
"Documentations update is an issue."
Understanding how, what and when users are going to use the app.
👷♂️ Monitoring asset health is very time-consuming.
🕹 Most of the customers are orthodox about cloud storage,
🎯 Technicians are required for periodic servicing and emergency trouble shooting.
📝 Troubleshooting is completely dependent on documents that may or may not be updated.
☠️ A minor error can create havoc even a human hazard. Operators don't understand the parameter terms very well but they know hardware.
💰 Spare parts are ordered very often and its a profitable business.
Persona
As a result of the customer interviews and prior research, two distinct personas were formed which helped to guide reasoning behind certain design choices. Their pains are quite different.
Affinity map
All the information from the research was collected and an affinity diagram was made to align all users' and stakeholder’s needs. Took one post-it and make it the first post-it in the first group.
I continued post-it by post-it as you place similar ideas together and create new groups when ideas do not fit into existing clusters.
User journey
A journey map was used to identify the various interactions and touchpoints customers have with Wedeco. Problems at these touchpoints were identified especially with the current website and therefore opportunities for improvement were therefore analysed.
Design, Prototype & Testing
Design principles
After the interview and observing their daily journey, we fairly understood the "why", the "mood" and the "visual language" of the needed design. On the basis of that, we derived 3 principles.
Fitt's law
It states that the amount of time required for a person to move a pointer (e.g., mouse cursor) to a target area is a function of the distance to the target divided by the size of the target. Thus, the longer the distance and the smaller the target's size, the longer it takes.
Mimicry
The act of copying of familiar objects, organisms or environments. To bring the familiarisation and make easy to understand and use.
Aesthetic usability effect
Users will perceive to use an attractive product more.
Low fidelity wireframe
Mid fidelity wireframe
Usability testing
I did multiple iterations and tested with users in Harford. Here is the examples of the feedbacks which reflected in the design.
Final design
After multiple iterations of design and testing, we had the final solution. But the user interface and experience caters to the unique need of the both user groups.
Few highlights are captured as an aspect of the experience here. It addresses the research synthesis with user scenarios and solutions to the problem.
Easy relatable dashboard
The dashboard reflects or mimics the real assets. It will solve the problem of the operators who do not have many ideas of parameters. But they can quickly relate the asset part of devices. They are very familiar with the assets or asset parts.
Visual graph reduces the errors.
Parameter comparison
While troubleshooting technicians would like to see multiple parameters together to get a relative view for a time period. Certain parameters are always related.
Users can view the graph when they are clicking on the dashboard tiles. They can compare that parameter with other parameters.
Users can also tap into the graph and view the data points.
Troubleshooting
Each event is attached to a specific workflow. This is a step process. As an example- the "UV lamp failure" error type, the user has to go through 3 checks. They will be able to see the "how" and "what" of the process in detail and can perform. When only they complete the checkpoints and mark faulty or good, they can acknowledge the event. Till the time users are not completing all steps, the acknowledged CTA will not be active.
The documents for troubleshooting are not often updated and lots of the time technicians need to call others.
Lamp health
Lamps are arranged in 6/12/18 series in 2 rows. For the user they need to see the status and the details of each lamp. Also need to identify if the lamp is a sensor lamp or error or healthy.
During usability testing we go a feedback about not finding error lamp and confused about the meaning of blue lamp.
In the module, user can view the status and details. They can tap and view of different once. Error lamp should be default. The confusion of different types of the lamp are differentiated by colour and description.