In my role as product manager I applied design thinking from my UX background to bridge the gap between industry 4.0 and user experience. Many customers are on the road to digitalisation with hot topics such as AI, AR, VR, 5G. But before jumping into new technologies I am trying to show the importance of understanding user needs. You could have the best hardware but if the human computer interaction is lacking, you won’t be nearly as efficient as you’d imagine. To achieve this, I have developed personas to be used throughout the company, developed a consultancy model, hosted workshops, webinars, and various other presentations.
Role:
Product Manager Visualisation
Industry:
Industrial automation
Challenges
Changing industry: UX maturity within industrial automation is very low, mindsets need to shift UX from a "could have" to a "must have"
User Experience: Prioritising users whilst adhering to industry standard including safety
My Approach
Consultancy
Client Consultation: Conducted in-depth discussions with the clients to understand the main pain points, main users, and specific requirements.
Further development: UX consultancy for machine builders in order to help with their digitalisation journeys.
Personas
As part of the consultancy plan and the promotion of UX within industrial automation, I developed 3 main persona’s to help engineers understand their end customers.
Otto the Operator: Keeps production running
Tina the Technical Specialist: Checks installations and performs maintenance tasks
Mari the Manager: Interested in data deriving from machine output
Workshops & Webinars
University of Twente: In may 2021, I hosted a UX workshop for masters students at University Twente as part of the “head in the clouds” symposium of SA Proto. The goal of the workshop was to show what UX is like in industrial automation. During the workshop students were introduced to our various persona’s (Otto, Enna, Tina, Mari) and came up with solutions to their pain points.
Webinar: As the product manager of Visualisation, I hosted 2 webinars introducing UX into industrial environments
