Design for Complicated Energy Management System
Summary
EMS Gateway (Codename) is MOXA’s new investment in the power industry’s energy management system, which combines brand-new software and hardware.
We aim to adopt and integrate self-developed Edge IIOT Software and Device Lifecycle Management Service, creating a new user experience that is “Ready to Use” and “Easy to Run,” tailored to the needs and scenarios of the power industry.
I was invited to participate in the EMS project in the exploratory phase alongside a junior product designer. I lead the team in creating a design roadmap, refining user scenarios, defining information architecture, conducting competitive analysis and user research, as well as proposing design concepts for iterations.
Throughout the product development, I worked closely with the System Architect and regularly prioritized business goals with the Product Manager. As no Software Product Manager in this project, I took on some responsibilities alongside the System Architect.
My Role
- Lead Product Designer
- User Researcher
Deliverables
- Design Roadmap
- Competitive Analysis
- Information Architecture
- User Research
- User Flow
- Wireframe & Prototype
Duration
2020.11 – 2021.11
Team Structure
Strategic & Explore Process
I collaborated with teams to develop a design roadmap that ensured we stayed on schedule. I established distinct objectives, strategies, and desired results for each phase.
Impact:
- Proven helpful for product managers and engineers collaborating with a designer for the first time.
- Help the team to understand the designer’s contribution without feeling overwhelmed.
- Communication efficiency has increased by over 80%.
User Journey Map
This journey map portrayed one of our clients in the power industry with MOXA’s products. We visualized their routes, including machine receiving, preparatory work, on-site installation, data analysis, troubleshooting, and daily maintenance processes.
Impact:
We noticed a crucial issue that required immediate attention. The engineers needed debugging software from other companies or self-created program code to accomplish tasks. We included this insight as one of our goals for improving our product.
Competitive Analysis
Based on the list of competitor software collected by the Product Manager, we worked with the System Architect to test these competing products, sort out the software’s key processes, and analyze the pros and cons of interface design.
Impact: This move helped inspire the engineering team to gain more design inspiration for product development.
Feature Brainstorming
We conducted several brainstorming sessions to refine product features based on market trends, business goals, user scenarios, and competitive product analysis.
The image below depicts the result of the whole feature, while the image on the right comprehensively explains one of the product’s functionalities.
Sitemap
During the exploration phase, we developed several sitemap iterations. However, we faced challenges with the integration of two pre-existing products that present legacy issues, as well as the utilization of different module block writing methods. We could not fully bifurcate the initial services into minimized and reorganized ones into EMS sitemap.
Therefore, We kept working with the Edge IIOT Software and DLM Service engineering team to ascertain our proposed plan’s feasibility.
User Flow
Mockup & Prototype
Reflection
I realized the significance of having accurate documentation in software project management.
Our team had primarily concentrated on hardware development, leaving us with no project management documents or software tools for software development projects. Furthermore, some team members lacked experience working alongside designers.
To address these gaps, I took a course on Google and implemented the WBS worksheets I learned to enhance our project management.
Although the project management issue is not the main focus, I am grateful for how much it has benefitted me.
Impact
The following changes as a result of our exploring design phase:
- The project passed the POC phase and moved on product development phase.
- A follow-up design collaboration has been initiated.
- We got the PM support to conduct further user research.
- The collaboration process was proven to work and put into the workflow example and share to the other team.