Patricia N.
Sr. User Experience Researcher
Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk Design Studio
Exploratory Usability Study
The challenge:
Rockwell Automation (RA) embarked on a multi-year endeavor to create a brand new software product, FactoryTalk Design Studio, their largest feat in 100 years. The software would need to be as sophisticated and diverse as the industrial automation customers who use it. A premiere feature request of the FactoryTalk Design Studio software was the ability to collaborate on complex code in "real time", despite the intricate stress that one wrong line or piece of code could shut down an entire factory floor. Further exploration around this subject was needed in order to justify investment in it.
My role:
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UX Researcher
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Industry:
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Industrial Automation, SaaS
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My responsibilities:
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Collaboratively plan the study with Project Manager/Product Owner/UX Designer/Visual Designer
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Script creation, team touch-points, recruitment​
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Remotely facilitate usability sessions
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Solely lead the research analysis and readout
The Approach:
Knowing this intricate collaboration feature was not well-refined, yet had been iterated on enough for lo-fidelity wireframes, moderated exploratory usability sessions were deemed the most appropriate research method. The team needed user feedback on the wireframes to guide design refinement, but more importantly, we needed to ask open-ended questions while participants completed each task to enrich our understanding of the feature as a whole and how it fit within users' daily tasks.
The Impact:
The goals of the study were achieved: First, we learned that users did not view the MVP as much of a barrier to adoption, so we could continue to prove this feature was worth business investment. Second, additional opportunities areas were uncovered and identified for future research.