Overview

Role

UX Designer
UI Designer
UX Researcher

Duration

1 month

Team

2 UX/UI Designers
1 CTO/Program Lead
6 Software Engineers
3 Machine Learning Engineers
5 Hardware Engineers
3 Test Engineers

Introduction

OWSI is a multi-robot control system driven by Swarm Intelligenceand and Machine Learning. The system assists users in controlling different types of robots collaborating and completing missions as planned. Users can plan, monitor, and analyze robot activities and performances.

Project Goals

Designing a trust and safety operation system by providing reliable fraud detection and accurate operational processes for a multi-robot control system.

Outcome Highlight

Upgraded notification system. Redesigned UI components for multi-robot control system and built up a dynamic UI Library for diverse customer needs.
Enhanced the notification effectivity.
Leveled up the design system for multiple stakeholders and objects.

Notification System and Components Final Design

"How could we design a trust and safety operation system for users?"

Challenges

Challenge 1

Users may overlook urgent messages when managing multiple tasks if the notification designs are too similar.

How users could recognize the objective of the message?

How users could know the data transferring between different objectives?

Challenge 2

Users felt a loss of control when the data transfer between different robots was hidden.

How users could know whether the message required an action?

How users could avoid missing any urgent messages?

Defined problems and insights by hosting a workshop

To understand the workflows and stakeholders' insights, I organized a collaborative workshop that involved engineers and program managers. I designed a brainstorming matrix to frame each mission stages and understand the users' actions, touchpoints, thoughts, frustrations, and opportunities.

1. Learned about the user flows and operation procedures.

In the workshop, I clarified the robot collaboration and procedures, then simplified the complex workflows using visual storytelling methods to ensure team alignment.

2. Summarized and analyzed the POVs of stakeholders

I summarized and categorized the insights and thoughts of each stakeholder.

Operator

If something is wrong, where to find debug procedure/ which to follow?

If there are many alerts, how do I know what to look at first?

Add notes for my reaction to one certain notification.

Geologist

I want to know the key KPIs and the rock’s status.

I want to know the robot’s next activity.

I might need to check the rockface photos in one place.

Tech Support

I want to read all of the notification at one place.

I want to know what the operators reactions for the error detection or notification.

Manager

I don’t want to read all notification.

I only want to read the big changes and urgent information.

Visitor

I will be curious about the robots’ performance and activities.

I hope I won’t mess up the task if I touch something accidentally.

3. Set up the goals of the notifications

Learned from the stakeholders' POVs, not only providing a message, the users want to recognize the object quickly, diagnose the problem, and know how to recover the issue.

Recognize

Diagnose

Recover

Challenge 1

Users may overlook urgent messages when managing multiple tasks if the notification designs are too similar.

To keep the consistency of all of the products in OffWorld, we shared the same template with other systems. All of the notifications will be presented in the same place with a similar design.

1. Categorized the notification inventory.

I clarified the categories of the notification messages and the audiences to ensure the messages were delivered to the right stakeholders.

Categories of notification messages

KPIs Update

Surveyor created lidar maps.

Surveyor gathered 124 rock photos.

Excavator finished the conduction.

Robot Activity

Surveyor starts scanning plan.

Surveyor starts photo shooting plan.

Surveyor transferred the rock photos to the excavator.

Next Step
(Call-To-Action)

Should allow the Surveyor to transfer the photos to the Excavator?

Should allow the Excavator to load rock photos?

To start a plan, select a robot on the map or squad display.

Sure you want to delete?

Fraud Detection
(Call-To-Action)

The loading didn't go through. Please do the following actions.

Surveyor battery is running low, should allow the Surveyor to run back home?

Detected abnormal operation of the Excavator, do you want to pause it?

2. Identified the target audience for the notifications.

3. Clarify the urgency levels.

4. Redesigned the notificaton UI design based on urgency.

Increased operator response and clarity of urgency

To increase operator response and clarity of urgency, I moved the warning message window to the center of the interface to call attention and action to debug the error. This avoids a big mistake or damage that could terminate the mission.

Before

After

Clarify the urgency by adding warning icons.

Added a yellow alert icon to help users recognize the urgent level quickly.

Before

After

Lowered the KPIs summary notification level

Lowered the KPIs summary notification level to optimize the user experience and reduce the instruction from the notification, by moving the window to the right side and increased the readability by emphasizing key metrics.

Before

After

Challenge 2

Users felt a loss of control when the data transfer between different robots was hidden.

There was a gap between the robots' collaboration and the users. Initially, there was no feature requirement for the data transfer notification. However, after a few design iterations, I realized the human-computer communication was missing. After I added this feature, I received the most positive feedback during the usability testing from the participants.