Boris Soliz
UI Designer
Factory floors across GE were embarking on an ambitious goal: Make all their factories, brilliant. Everything from Digital twins, wearable technology, information in the cloud, and the ability to have digital tools in combination with different methodologies was a huge challenge. Our team embarked in helping on some of those digital tools for GE. One concept idea that was later developed for the factories was built on a hackathon I participated in.
The business unit had a hackathon to develop a simple solution for machine up/downtime status. Given we had knowledge of the business and had proven out we can deliver results with User Research, User Interface Design and overall project management, they invited us to participate. It was a quick 4 day event were I participated and designed iPad screens of the Ops Leader Flow
The challenge was to create an iPad app that would allow an operation leader monitor their machines across their factory floors in realtime. They needed to be mobile and quick to respond. An Operation Leader is always on the move, therefore being able to have a mobile device was key to his/her success. During the hackathon, I created some quick sketches on what would turn out to be the final designs for the project.
I quickly then designed some screens to get some inspiration for the rest of the project. It generated a lot of ideas and tested what we were capable of doing with our engineers in the team.
Once we got a clear direction on what this app could look like, we scaled back the designs in order to meet the desired results within the hackathon. We had to pivot direction given some new direction we received from the business unit on who this was going to be for. Both myself and our Interaction Designer created a simple flow to understand the logic behind the Ops Leader journey.
With this simple user flow and a more clear understanding on the final deliverable, I started to design something quick in order give the developers time to develop something fast and presentable to senior leadership for feedback.
I presented these screens during the hackathon and was chosen to be the UI screens to move forward with for the business unit.
It was a great win for my team and for the business unit as a whole. We were able to produce the application fairly quickly. Our team quickly became the go to team for deliverables for all digitized projects at GE for the Brilliant Factory Initiative. We also developed an Apple Watch Concept for the same team.
