Schlumberger - Project Explorer
System for oil & gas production projects
DATE
November 2022
MY ROLE
Key Experience Designer
DOMAIN
Energy, Oil & Gas
SERVICES
Personas, Flow Chart, CJM, Concept design, Prototyping, Usability testing, A/B Testing, Surveys
BRIEFLY
Project Explorer is a supporting app (file operator) for the main one, called Petrel (subsurface data visualisation). Functionality is quite similar to Abstract which is working with Sketch or to GitHub.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
An existing version of Project Explorer (PE) was very raw and gave end users only a few useful features. Users have been forced to use many additional third-party applications to be able to do their job clearly. This was time-consuming and often confusing and creating a large number of identical duplicated files. As a result, users have often asked the company to improve and expand the functionality of Project Explorer. My role: Key UX Engineer, was working apart in a team with Designers, BA's, Domain Consultants
Work began with gathering all possible and available information on the existing version of PE, such as: data, metrics, end users, their requests, habits, how they work with the PE, what confuses them and what they love.
USER RESEARCH & PERSONAS
At the workshop, users were given the task to write all the possible types of personas, that can interact with application, later everyone voted to find the most primary.
SURVEYS
Users were asked to imagine and write down their perfect workflow in silence, and after one by one describe it for everybody. That was a brilliant idea as all workshop attendees started to collaborate, improve their imagined workflows and create perfect journeys that were built on a team decision and compromise between each other. That story repeated for each of the 3 companies. And results, as it was expected, were similar in all cases. I am still very thankful for the proactive and enthusiastic position of everybody ❤ An outcome was a full understanding of end users expressions, needs, motivations, frustrations, but also their hopes, fears, abilities, limitations, reasoning, and goals️.
PRIMARY PERSONAS & USER JOURNEYS
Artifacts from the last workshop allowed to continue working on the personas. Six primary personas were formed, supplemented by their goals, user journeys and collaboration with others. This exercise was done iteratively (almost as everything) until the result became sufficiently polished and alligned between all stakeholders to continue working on combining all user journeys into one.
FLOW CHART
The flow chart presented below is the result of combining the journeys of primary personas to have a visual observation of how closely they collaborate one with the other. Difficulties in describing this were added by many unknown things related to the use of third-party applications. But in the end, after several workshops, a common agreement and opinion was reached. Horray!
USER STORIES & DESIGN ROADMAP
In order to put my own work on the rails, I created user stories that were divided into epics, stories, and tasks, and after coordination with stakeholders, I made a Design Roadmap from all of this, which was divided into sprints. That gave a clear understanding of the action plan, the ability to correctly adjust the sequence, scope, and get an idea of the estimates.
WIREFRAMES
The first sketches and lo-fi wireframes were made in Mural. Due to the lack of understanding by the end users of many aspects of design and testing, it was decided that after approval of the main ideas of the layout and components, we will move on to creation a fully linked UI prototype in Figma, that will have a same look and feel as a real working application.
DESIGN LANGUAGE SYSTEM
The first sketches and lo-fi wireframes were made in Mural. Due to the lack of understanding by the end users of many aspects of design and testing, it was decided that after approval of the main ideas of the layout and components, we will move on to creation a fully linked UI prototype in Figma, that will have a same look and feel as a real working application.
UI
The task was so difficult because it was necessary to reach a huge compromise between outdated Petrel app, artifacts that I got after all the workshops and also make the application consistent with others (4-6) in Delfi, and minimize the number of clicks and mouse movements in each scenario. Small steps matter, so component by component, page by page design became polished. On the picture is shown final design option which was achieved after iterations of testings. Intermediate versions have not survived, and, honestly, I do not see any reason to show them here.
USABILITY TESTING
Before launching the product, I did a testing round in order to reveal possible usability problems. To obtain the most effective data for me, the design was tested remotely, and iteratively, according to scenarios of all types of personas. Participants were from different countries and had different background experiences in using Schlumberger applications. All tests took place remotely and were moderated. All findings were noted, divided into problems and opportunities, and added to the prioritization map.
KEY LEARNINGS
Experience is gained not at the desk but in battles.
During this project, I can confidently say that my personal experience has multiplied twice. It was quite a complex and stressful project with a lot of unclear things, primarily related to the nuances of the oil and gas industry.
Human attention is finite.
Humans can only focus on one thing at a time, so prioritize your actions and direct their attention to your goal. Pick your battles wisely — be careful how you direct their attention because each move can distract their focus from your goal.
Be open to being wrong.
Don't get attached to your ideas, because there's a large possibility that a better idea than yours exists, or that you could be entirely wrong. When you get too attached to your ideas, it stifles innovation because it limits you from looking at other options. It changes your perspective from looking at ideas to defending your pride. Don't stifle innovation by being too attached to your idea.
