ATCO Field Employee Mobile App
ATCO Group
February 2020 – October 2020
User Interface Design • Mobile App (iOS)
Problem
How might we provide a convenient and all-in-one personal administration and report creation / submission mobile app for field staff, in order to reduce administrative overhead and collect real-time data for safety and security?
Approach
Users & Audience
- ATCO field staff entering alone into remote facilities
- ATCO staff who encounter birds, nests, and chicks around power lines or transformers
- ATCO staff who may encounter wild fires in remote areas
- Operational centre staff who monitor field staff in remote areas
- Management who want more data to make better business decisions base on intelligence
Role & Team
- My role: User Interface designer
- Product team also consisted of: a Full-stack developer, a Product owner, a Project manager, and Business analyst from the business area
Scope & Constraints
- Real-time location data based off of cellular data and GPS
- Needed to check-in using standard employee profile and record project name, area, weather, precipitation, and other environmentals, take photos, add notes, confirm and send reports.
- Default to device sensors to autofill information, with confirmation
- Use both Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and ATCO’s internal design system
Challenges
- What happens if we cannot connect to networks? How do we capture and send that data?
Our approach
- Contextual inquiry (job shadowing)
- Comparative & competitive analysis
- Data / analytics analysis for usage rates and patterns
Recommendations
- For connection issues, record the information on the device local, and once reconnected, send the data to the server
Artefacts and deliverables
Facility check-in screens
Nest sweep reporting
Wild fire reporting
Results
Outcomes
- Field staff appreciated the digital workflow and the reduction of paperwork
- The real time location and check-in data helped with the risk management of our remote workers
- Digital design and user experience (as an in-house resource) were brand-new tools in ATCO’s repertoire, so there was a lot of good lessons learnt, and future projects included a lot more user input and consultation
Reflections
- We focused on data analytics to drive design and development. It would have been beneficial to do rounds of usability testing and even co-design with the field staff
- The business areas staff were incredibly knowledgeable and provided great insights, however—self admittedly—years removed from field work. Some validation of assumptions should have been conducted for best practices