Boris Soliz
UI Designer
Apple and GE entered a partnership to deliver powerful industrial apps designed to bring predictive data and analytics from Predix, GE’s industrial Internet of Things (IoT) platform, to iPhone and iPad. The two companies unveiled a new Predix software development kit (SDK) for iOS, which gives developers the tools to make their own powerful industrial IoT apps. Our team became the go-to team in helping this amazing initiative create mobile applications for the iPhone and iPad.
Based on the blend of our PREDIX system and blending it with the Apple design standards, our team embarked on creating an app based on the SDK that GE developed. We also collaborated with the Apple Enterprise Design Team. We mapped out a new journey for the Aviation business: helping pilots get better data before they leave for a trip and possibly saving lives.
There was already an existing application for pilots, called FlightPulse™ to understand their fuel usage, etc, AFTER a completed flight. The challenge this time was pilots wanted a better way to understand their flight path based on previous flights from their logs or other pilots’ logs so they can make adjustments to their flight plan, make fuel adjustments to their planes, etc. This would help the entire industry save millions of dollars on wasting gas before they leave.
Our team, alongside the Apple Enterprise Design team, had a 3 day intense design session with our main users - Pilots from different commercial airlines. We mapped out a "Golden Thread" on the pilots journey and a day in the life of what pilots do before, during and after their flights. This led us to create some wireframes using real data from what the pilots provided us.
After we created the wireframes on day one, I started to create what the app would look like and get feedback from the pilots and the product managers. In one night, I created a couple of screens highlighting the important screens the pilots were most concerned about. We populated the designs with real data to get better representation and feedback from the pilots.
Once the screens were created and got sufficient feedback from the users, I then gave the screens and related assets to the developers from our team, led by our amazing iOS developer Clifford Gong, who were at the location with us and they were able to quickly develop a quick prototype of the app in X-code which we presented to the pilots and the rest of the team..
Both the users and the product managers were extremely impressed with the level of fidelity we were able to achieve. We received much praise for the work we created in such a short period. The project is still being determined if it will be completed by the aviation business, but being able to have great feedback and momentum from the design session with Apple was a huge win for both Apple and GE.
Boris is an excellent UX designer. I've seen him lead many design efforts at GE and his work received great reviews from customers to clients to executives alike. Whether it's leading design thinking initiatives, conducting user interviews, developing proof of concepts or hands-on-design from scratch in a variety of mediums, Boris effectively uses his communication and design skills to reliably deliver successful outcomes.
