AREview
Overview
AREview invested in software to solve asset inspections/predictions, to give their clients faster reports, thus more profitable returns on their assets.
AREview is American Rail Engineer’s software suite. They serve the bridge and rail industry offering consulting services, inspections, and planning.
A large amount of effort is spent inspecting their client’s bridges (as required by the FRA each year).
Their goal was to create a seamless experience from field inspection to sending final reports to the client.
problem statement
Asset management was a slow and complicated process. Photos and assets were not easily referenced to each other. Reports were mostly on paper and required repeat data entry. Predictions for clients were not easily shared or compared.
Users & Audience
Rail engineers, bridge inspectors, executives of railroads, and the asset management industry.
ARE Internal Users
Senior Staff to better research and compile bridge repairs, thus spending budget on most profitable assets rather than unused assets.
Bridge Inspectors to do their inspections faster, rather than double inputting information and spending hours sorting and assigning photos
Office Support to receive reports and information instantly via syncing from the mobile app
Project Managers to better assign tasks and schedule trips
ARE Clients
Railroad, subdivision, and bridge managers to make faster decisions by receiving deliverables before capital planning across their assets.
roles and responsibilities
As the UX Consultant at AREview I was given responsibility within the roles of product designer, product owner, and project manager.
Translation of Stories with Business Need, DEV team, Design Team
Being the medium for all teams to translate business needs into design and DEV
Creating stories from business needs given by Product Owner (Taylor) & Stakeholders
UX & Design of Internal , Ground, Drone, Client Apps
Provide design comps for interactions and patterns
Facilitate reviews and story/design updates from reviews
Capture in Jira, Zeplin, and other programs
Communication between design and dev
Management of Product Design
Review of design work
Design direction
Enforcement of design system
Enforcement of business need vs. user need
Communication of design options for said business needs
Estimates of time and effort for said deadlines
User Testing
Creating User test documents and templates
Conducting user tests
Creating of prototypes from sketch and principle app
Recording user feedback and sharing with product and stakeholders
Translation of user feedback into stories, tasks, and assigning priority with stakeholders
Consulting and Product steering
Consulting with Product Owner for best ways to meet deadlines, keep costs down, and deliver to development team
Consulting with Stakeholders and communication on product roadmap ahead
Solves for user’s pain points
Development of each user persona: client, internal user, and beyond
In depth knowledge of best practices and constant research on trends, programming languages, tools, and process improvements
Scope & Constraints
Create an MVP of ARE’s bridge inspection process by January 2020. Bridge inspections are required by the FRA each 150 days and the client needed to start using software for the next inspection year.
Photos and data were required to be updated per query at a time, rather than one query to update an entire data set. Inspections happen in remote and hard to access areas, typically without an internet connection and deep vegetation with extreme weather.
Bridge Data needed a round of engineer validation and testing from import
Experience of support roles resulted in multiple roles/responsibilities placed on product design: road mapping, user experience, research and interviewing target personas, design library, writing stories around product/design/dev, implementing those stories via sketch and native prototypes using principle app or sketch prototyping.
7 to 1 developer to designer ratio
Inspectors and engineers were used to a non-database manual process: paper and excel sheets to do ratings and reports per asset
Process
There was no established design process when I arrived, but for good reason: we were all learning what that process was. The clients process now reflects the work we put in at the beginning. When first entering the culture I observed and asked questions from a humble perspective. After all, they are bridge engineers who are extremely intelligent and eager to learn.
Roadmapping
Road mapping with the team was one of my main asks in the beginning. We needed a source of truth to keep expectations aligned to reality. In order to demonstrate the value I held many meetings exchanging their knowledge and needs for product ideas that could make their employees lives easier. I tracked results in jira stories, notes, meeting summaries, pinned slack notes, and google sheets.
Each sprint I met with stakeholders and a key user for knowledge base. A guided conversation would occur around customer needs vs stakeholder needs. Timing for design/dev was estimated with manager and weighed for priority. Through the process I would expose the stakeholders to the dialogue, which created buy in for the work done.
My process for stories was to:
First write a basic statement considering key user and what they were trying to accomplish for the business
Do user research/interviews and define further against what existed already, or was to be designed, tested, and developed.
Employ design thinking via atomic design theory. Think about the smallest piece of the story, in order to continue to the larger story.
Which parts of the product had existing design and which called for new components or logic that had not been created yet.
Logic for the application would be written , then design was created to match.
From here on I started creating process. The mentioned techniques are how we as a team learned to work quickly to confirm our assumptions, while also giving each other grace to improve upon said technique.
Due to requested privacy of this project the finished product cannot be shown, but only spoken to.
Example of atomic design for an in-line editable table.
Once a story was reviewed and signed off on by the product owner it entered the design stage:
Initial comps were quickly created via my design library.
Review from the product owner, other key members of the team (ranging from stakeholders to bridge engineers).
Rounds of edits and review, another clickable prototype or two
A UX Test document spelling out context to users. User testing commenced and in collaboration with team assumptions would be validated or adjusted.
Confirmation process from development team (not biting off more than we could chew)
Copying story and assigning to the DEV team with comps referenced in story (links to zeplin, videos showing interaction, prototypes)
Any new components were added to my design library document and to a react native library
Any discoveries made during our story writing, design, or testing process were added to the backlog to be weighed against priority when planning next sprint.
The best part of the process is simple: reach out to users with questions when assumptions need to be validated...
Example of a User Test Prototype using Principle App.
Building my product IQ was important when dealing with bridge data. There was a lot of new information, regulation constraints within FRA standards, and the engineer’s business process.
Speed was attained by the ARE org being very receptive to questions and collaboration from the top down. I had access to the CEO, CFO, inspectors, engineers, and product owner on a weekly basis, sometimes daily basis.
Outcomes & Results
ARE Clients are empowered with higher ROI per each asset purchased (in the millions of dollars range) using ARE’s database of prior repairs, conditions, and data.
Ease of deep navigation patterns (3-5 levels deep) and priority of data per client, railroad, subdivision, bridge.
Product and Business process defined for bridge inspection.
Creation of roadmap for Internal Web App, Inspection App, Drone App, and Client Portal.
Generation of field, initial, and final reports internal process improved from 30-50 days to 2 Days, including the field inspection.
Drone Mobile Application to categorize UAV and photos from the field.
Migration from excel/physical paper process to mobile application used for inspection
Global data sync using Aurora to Postgres database
Client Portal
Web Application MVP launch
Inspection mobile app launch
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