Action! The scene opens with a shot of the 4D Studio® product on a users' screen, with a maintenance page overlaid. The camera then pans out to reveal a bustling office in Mountain View, with workers sitting at their desks, feverishly working away on their computers. A voice over begins: "Here at Daqri, we're dedicated to bringing Augmented Reality to the industrial sector. Our team of designers, engineers and scientists work tirelessly to make sure our publishing platform is state of the art. This is in bated anticipation of the launch of our proprietary hardware that will ingest and display the published content in AR.", said the CEO. But hold on, let's save that last part for the next case study.
The camera cuts to a shot of the lead designer, a front-end engineer and the product owner sitting at a table, sipping on their morning coffee. They look up and turn to face the viewer. One of them speaks: "Unfortunately, due to the CEO's desire to merge our products and now focus on the industrial space, we're going to need to completely re-design the entire user interface. Please bear with us and check back soon for access to our platform." The scene ends with a close-up of the 4D Studio logo, with the words "Augmenting Reality." superimposed over it.
The bad. The bad. The ugly.
The existing design had been created by two different contractors, working independently across two different graphics applications. My expertise at consolidating the strengths of each effort resulted in a new and uniformed path forward.
The current state of the product was a static design that did not emulate modern web applications. There was no development in place of flexible layouts. This had to change.
The visual design of the product was dated. It lacked much of designs' best-practices that users had come to expect as seen on other robust web products.
4D Studio® is an enterprise software suite that allows planners and engineers to create and publish their own AR scenes, work instructions and workflows to mobile applications. The authoring interface consists of two core screens. The first allows the user to set up their project with steps and tasks. After a project is structured, the user is taken to the editor or authoring view. Similar to other software, the user is able to build elements, upload 3D models and integrate real-world physical sensors.
Armed with a laser-focused understanding of the why and what, I began to ideate.
As a starting point, I inherited two different designs – consumer and industrial – that had been created by two part-time contractors. One had been working in Adobe Photoshop and the other in Illustrator. The design style was scattered across numerous disparate iterations with no unified look or design system library in place. Fortunately, I tend to thrive in ambiguity.
We began our work by me pitching my vision and after a series of creative sessions we settled in on the direction. My overall approach would allow for the UI to fade into the background, thus floating the authored content up, taking center stage. From the two existing product versions, I entertained a variety of visual explorations, initially employing a general flattening to the skeuomorphic styles and moving forward with a the muted and eventual semi-transparent style. The color palette was simple, dark and professional. Multiple subtle variants of the finalized version were created, compared and contrasted and ultimately presented for approval. After a trip down to LA and a private pitch to the CEO – later the broader executive team – we had a winner.
By coalescing around a primarily monochromatic scheme with an injection of our company’s brand color for focusing the user's attention, the end result was serious yet approachable. Upon establishing the style for the editor, I moved onto rolling it out across the workflow template and all associated views. Through close collaboration between myself and the devs, we were able to integrate the re-design and deploy it to our user base. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to interview a handful of our users to get a better sense of the impact. Although the responses weren't truly qualitative, they were encouraging.
"With it's brand new look and feel, it's so easy to use. I love how the panels are somewhat transparent and appear to fade away, allowing me to focus on my scene and content creation!" – Site Manager
#1 Users have changing behaviors and expectations. What is true today, most likely won't be true tomorrow. Furthermore, once you expose them to a better way of reaching their goals, their goals can and will expand.
#2 Eliminating friction can be one of the most powerful 'additions'. Often by simply saying no to an additional feature, or by removing elements of a screen or flow altogether can yield powerful outcomes.
#3 Users increasing expect a more seamless engagement. This should go without saying. But along with it comes their reward when you truly match their expectations.
The team learned a lot. It was evident that they learned the importance and value of process throughout. I believe the CEO learned a little too - there is value in getting users involved in the creation of a product. Because when you optimize for one, you optimize for none.
As the first design hire within the tech headquarters of this start-up, I was tasked with owning the end-to-end product design for our AR publishing platform. This case study features my journey through a complete re-design of our consumer and enterprise SAAS platforms. During which, I created and implemented a new Design System, refreshed the look and feel and improved the overall user experience of the core of our product.
CompanyDaqriProductResponsive WebRolesResearch, Ideation, Prototyping, Visual & Interaction DesignLinkwww.linkedin.com