Boris Soliz
UI Designer
The power business division needed a better way to sell its turbines. They had an app that needed a major update and is available in all formats (agnostic to any platform). The High Impact Innovation team, which I was a member of, took on the challenge and created a solution based on user research and initial workout meetings with the users, GE Sales representatives. Our team created a Journey map, wireframes and they needed some Visual Direction and more ideas on how to make the app more user-friendly and how to present the turbines on a phone, tablet and desktop screens. Navigation was key to getting to the details and info of the turbines for the phone and tablet so there needed to be some navigational structure that worked well in all formats.
The app that needed updated was clearly looking old, not user friendly and worse of all, it was not available on desktop or mobile. It was only built for tablet.
Our interaction designer on the team, along side our senior UX Director, had a workout session with the business unit to better understand the need and get a better picture as to whom and how this app will be consumed. A simple user flow was established as the direction we needed to move forward with.I also started establishing a small design system for the app. I took the initial old designs, which were only for iPads, and alongside the main IxD, we made it more user friendly and proposed a new navigation paradigm.
I developed a proposed explanation of why we needed a new design, what ideas I had to make the app look better and what could enhance the user-experience using navigation and initial findings with the users. I developed some prototypes based on the new designs and presented it to the users and stakeholders to get feedback and validation as well as to further refine the experience.
Once we got some great feedback on the user flow and visual direction, I started to develop all the screens for desktop, tablet and mobile. This was the first time I used Sketch as a main design tool. It was a bit challenging learning a new tool after years of designing with Illustrator, but I was able to quickly grasp the tool and develop all the screens for the app.
The adoption of the new design was a great success. Users found the navigation structure and the overall experience much better than before. Having the new app be agnostic to any format helped the users access the information quicker. The integration into GE’s current Power generation Portal was also key to making this application work as it had to be an extension of their portal, which it was.
