Client’s Challenge
Our client creates high quality, tailor-made products through a unique and highly automated production line. People oversee this production process and quality testing. Artificial intelligence is used to detect visual defects faster and accurately enough, because humans can’t keep up with the high speed of the production line.
AI is an important factor in the solution, but not enough to solve the problem. First of all, AI isn’t flawless. Manual review and feedback are needed to refine the model that defines the system’s capabilities. Second, operators need to understand the different test results, the issues that arise and be able to decide which ones need attention first.
Our client wanted to create a convenient interface that supports operators to perform their tasks effectively and efficiently. Not all operators are engineers. Non-engineers must also be able to perform tasks independently. They longed for a user interface that hides unnecessary complexity and shows exactly what is needed, when it is needed.
Our Solution
Creating interactions that are easy to use requires a deep, empathetic understanding of users, their needs and context. We started by involving different types of operators in the development process by observing and listening to them. We used these insights to advocate for them and align their positions with conflicting perspectives of different stakeholders.
We brainstormed different ideas and helped the client choose the most promising one. We then turned these draft ideas into visual prototypes. This significantly accelerated the feedback loop between all stakeholders. We managed to create an intelligent user interface that automatically shows the highest priority issues. This significantly minimizes the steps operators must take.
Finally, we confronted operators with an interactive prototype. This allowed us to validate the concept before converting it into code. This helped to detect and resolve thinking errors at an early stage. It also ensured that the vision of what to build could be clearly communicated to the team.
Created Impact
Our solution contributed to our customer's increased productivity. This saves our customer time and money. This advantage is twofold. First of all, we were able to establish that operators can be trained faster and perform their tasks more efficiently. Second, the development team gained a better view of the solution they needed to implement. Their attention could be fully focused on the quality of their work. Moreover, they were less confronted with ideas that still needed to be reworked.
