VIMANA provides software solution for Industrial Analytics. The dashboard app is one of the modules that is designed primarily for shop floor managers who can get real-time status updates of the machines from anywhere using their mobile phone. The app helps gain insight into the status, machine health, process parameters, and part production with pre-built dashboards on the mobile device.
Increase in machine downtimes result in lower production and reduced profits. Plant managers need to be well informed of the overall productivity that help them in take better decisions. This crucial information had to be designed such that it can be accessed from a mobile phone device making it available anytime and anywhere.
Shop floor managers and supervisors, maintenance staff and factory owners play an important role in making decisions based on timely informed decisions. At times these users are on the move and are away from the shop floor for various business reasons. They required to view status information round the clock and while on the move.
User research, brainstorming, ,sketches, low-fi and high-fi prototype, usability testing
Timeline: 3 weeks. Presenting complex charts and progress meters is challenging to design on a small screen. Usability and identifying key relevant pieces of information that make it usable on a mobile had to be identified. Not all functionality designed for the desktop need to be on the mobile and hence detailed research had to be done in identifying what’s essential.
As an initial phase, the analytics and content audit was carried out as part of project assessment. After brainstorming with stakeholders and plant managers the set of information that was crucial to view on a mobile platform were identified.
Findings:
Next, I used the insights generated to come up with a persona and to guide my design decisions.
Keeping the requirements of the user in mind, I started brainstorming ideas and sketched them on paper. I started by listing all the kinds of useful information that would be needed to be seen in the dashboard in order to help the user keep informed. Several dashboard layouts with different sets of information were thought through.
Goals:
Features:
After several round of iteration on the wireframes, a pixel perfect hi-fi screen prototype was designed. Screens including login and home page for the app were prepared and shared with the stakeholders. Colors and typography were picked from reusable components of UI Kits in Design System.
The app was tested with selected business owners to find out on its usability. One-on-one interview with the users were conducted and after probing questions users were able to carry out the given tasks without much difficulty. A common feedback was that the app was so simple that it didn’t have many levels of navigation and switching between dashboards was easy.