Equipment360

Overview

Equipment360 is one of the flagship products by HCSS. It allows mechanics and managers at construction sites to manage and maintain their heavy equipment fleet, and track hours for each mechanic working on the site.

My partner Isabel and myself were responsible for the redesign for the iPad application. We conducted internal user interviews to gather data, presented our findings to stakeholders, and constructed the information architecture for the application, along with wireframing, visual design, and high fidelity prototyping.

The Challenge

The Equipment360 iPad application required a visual facelift and had to undergo testing to see if there were any UX issues that could be identified and improved. These were our goals:

• Conduct user research to understand how the users interact with the products and what their pain points are.
• Modernize the user interface and implement new branding colors.
• Identify and fix pain points faced by the users, take out unnecessary functionalities, and look for opportunities to add new features that help our users.

Our Strategy

We installed the iPad application and started going through the user flows and the overall experience with the app. My partner Isabel and I divided the app by user-specific workflows and conducted a heuristic analysis to identify workflow and UI issues.

For such a large application this proved useful so we could focus on critical issues and solve those first. It was presented during the project kickoff meeting and got the approval from the stakeholders.

Heuristic Analysis of the old app

We knew what the critical issues were but it was time to get some perspective. We started off with interviewing three Customer Service Representatives. They were always the ones who were closest to the customer and the users (construction workers and mechanics). They are aware of the troubles the customers faced.

We asked about the kind of users we have, what differentiates them, their technological skills, educational background, common day to day activities, and other questions like:

• Needs the customer and/or users would like the software to address
• How long users spend using the software and when do they use it the most?
• What are the age demographics of the users
• Common frustrations the user talks about during calls with the representatives
• What do goals look like for different types of users who use the app

We learned about a bit about our users

The Mechanics:

• ‍Identify and add work orders to their time cards and carry them out. Don’t want the app to be a bottleneck to their work.
• Younger mechanics were more tech-savvy and would use the Equipment360 application as they completed their work orders.
• Older mechanics have less technical experience would rely on pen and paper for their needs and would use the Equipment360 app at the end of the day.

The Managers:

• Most delegate tasks to mechanics.
• Some would carry out the work orders themselves (Manager-Mechanics).
• Keep track of work orders and ensure smooth work flow at construction sites.

Putting our plan to action

We were provided a brand style guide that we expanded into a proper system with all the new colors that were decided for the redesign. The older version of the app was used as a reference and we were urged to not change the interface too much or else the users will get confused.

We drafted wireframes, low and high fidelity designs. We made sure we checked in with out senior designers from time to time to make sure we were on the right track.

We also put a lot of emphasis on the components system. We wanted to leave a guide for the developers that will be building from our designs, and also the future designers who will rely on this.

You can see what we built below.

Project is on-going and under NDA

I am unable to share anymore of the work that I have done. However, I do have slides that go into more details. I will be happy to share more during our interview.