Inspections

Less can be more. Invest in research.

Goal

Redesign inspectors tablet interface; taking advantage of newer software and hardware technologies.

My Role

Lead research and design efforts for redesign.

Discovery

One of the first workshops I facilitated was the creation of an Empathy Map. The team needed a shared understanding of user needs and to pinpoint gaps in existing knowledge. In addition we identified perceived pain points and goals the inspector may have; then leveraged How-Might-We questions, brainstormed potential solutions.

Inspector Empathy Map — The team created an Empathy Map based on their perception.

Percevied Pain Points, Goals, and How might we (solve them) — The team identified potential pain points and goals of inspectors, dot voted on the percieved most important, then identified potential solutions.

Another important task I performed early on was to create a Goal-directed Persona. The team needed to understand the goals, workflow and enviornment of an inspector. I peformed several Contextual Inquires, observing inspectors in their natural context. This gave a clearer picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the tablet and interface.

Following the Contextual Inquires, I created a Service Blueprint to visualize the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints during an inspectors shift.

I also created an updated Empathy Map validating, nullifying, and augmenting team assumptions.

Outcome

The IT organization had already begun negotiations with a vendor to procure larger tablets when I was assigned to the project, assuming bigger is better. This belief was also present during the Empathy Map Workshop and Stakeholder Interviews.

Inspector cafefully validating and capturing a photo of the freight.

While spending time with inspectors, I learned how important it was to them to not damage product when opening freight to validate it was correctly identified by the shipper. Inspectors are required to take photos of the product when creating claims that the freight was misidentified. It is challenging to slip a tablet under partial open shipments to take photos. One Inspector foundly harken back to before they had tablets, and used compact cameras to take photos. "They were much easy to handle and I spent a lot less time retaking photos."

Fortunetly, the IT organization was able to course correct and put the porcurement onhold to pivot to a form factor that would better service the inspectors needs.