AA.
Contribution
User research, Stakeholder interview, Project management, Low-fidelity prototype
Chief Engineers in Electricity department
Target Users
My role
UX Designer
6 Months
Duration
Problem
To make an AMR system to collect authentic, complete, on time data from meter through modem and provide on the software for monitoring and analysis purpose. Have a watch on network, mishappenings with meter, modem or with the data to be shown in the system and to keep a proper check on failures and critical alerts.
Initial Research
To design a solution for AMR from meter via modem, i first had to talk to the users. I began by creating research plan, conducted user interviews with five professionals between the ages 28 to 45 who have worked in the metering industry from 1.5 years, gained qualitative insights and took a closer look at their pain points, behaviors and motivations.
What did I learn
I learn't a lot through interview notes, found few common points that stood out to me.
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Needed AMR based software, with complete analysis and monitoring in simple and easy way.
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Reading the data with unsuccessful AMR was very lengthy task.
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Reason of meter reading failure was not easy, it look days and process to know about a single meter.
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Critical alerts happening in the meter, modem or system was not known to them.
Who did I meet
Based on what i covered during research, I synthesized the findings and created a realistic representation of 5 key audiences in the form of personas, by conducting persona workshops with all stakeholders covering all types of positions who are involved in using software's. My primary persona-Abhishek Mukherjee. By listening intently to the responses from my research interviews, I crafted Abhishek's persona as a way for me to evolve myself in his experiences.
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Design Phase
With the help of research, we created product information architecture. In this architecture we primarily considered health monitoring, forecasting, alerts and notifications in which we focused on how we can provide flawless experience to our customers.
Also, identified the main user flows from signing up for consumers to finding out more information about the system. Once user flows and information architecture had been established, i began to build out the key pages using paper prototype that would be needed to create new system.
Wireframes and Prototypes
Once the paper prototype got completed I jumped into creating Hi-Fi wireframes of my proposed solution and used Adobe XD to create a clickable prototype. Below are the Hi-Fi wireframes of my final solution with prototype version of the same.
Usability Testing
To get user feedback, I digitized my wireframes and reviewed to stakeholders.What would they click on when they are given the prototype? They are being able to complete the task with fewer misclicks.
- Searching should be with initial letters.
- Few filters need to be removed and wanted a search bar to directly search, as they didn't wanted to apply filters, that as also a task for them.
- Few lexicons needs to be changed, they wanted the names as in industrial terms.
The AMR system demonstrates a successful approach to automating meter data collection. AMR software helped utilities to monitor, analyze data faster with reasons of failure and critical alerts, it saved time and made easy for them to maintain meter and modems.