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This service allows users to control and manage any MQTT device conveniently from one place with Conrad Connect. Created for B2B users of Conrad Connect Professional.
The Problem
When Conrad Connect began to open the business focus to small and medium manufacturing companies offering IoT automations we noticed immediately a broad ecosystem of machines and communication protocols that often are closed to each others hence is not possible for the organizations to connect those machines to other devices or protocols. In small or medium size manufacturing companies there might be just one machine that does a very crucial operation for the entire business. If this machine for any reason has downtimes the company might have delays in delivering specific products to the clients. Surprisingly very often these machines don't have a notification process to alert the operator that a problem is occurring. A common communication system used in SMO manufactures is through MQTT which is a lightweight protocol that transport messages between devises. By integrating this protocol to thr Conrad Connect ecosystem the user has the possibility not only to extend the application to notifications and be alerted every time the machines stops but also to connect it to other devices from different brands .
Users & Audience
The target users for the MQTT service are professional operators working in manufacturing companies. The users operates industry specific equipment such as CNC (computer numerical control) or SPC (statistical process control) machines, preferences on mobile and real time communication.
Team & Role
I coordinated all aspects of design including: information architecture, user task flows, interaction, visual, product, and prototyping. I also conducted user research with industry expert in order to address behavior and attitudes.
Design Process
This service is based on a B2B customer needs and was designed after creating requirements together with business development and product owner. Once the requirements were ready my task was creating a workflow and user interface that allows users to connects their devices, creates topics for receiving sensors data from different data-types (numeric, boolean, enum,Json etc..) and visualise them in a table view.
We took as example the user journey for creating the very first item (so called " topic"), identified the key specs that had to be included in the service, then mapped out user flows based on those specs (a lot of communication with developers and field expert was involved).
Service subscription page
Instructions
Credentials and topic creation
Topic list
After several iterations we reached the final screens (Mobile version below). The goal was to keep the interface as clean as possible in order to enable the users to quickly and easily accomplish the tasks. An important part of the process was preventing the users to make errors and help them to visualize eventual mistakes before the final check with consequent time benefit.
Error handling
We gave special attention to error managements and we carefully designed all the steps for preventing the users to submit uncorrect topics with the outcome of saving time from unpleasant corrections. The first image shows when the user fill correctly all the inputs fields. In this case when the lasts form has been completed the create button would become active. In the second image, the user forgot to insert the correct information and the specific area shows the error. The create button would not become active until the user provide with the missing input.
Further iterations
Once the service has been developed and the users started using it we received an additional request for allowing the system to read json files coming from the machines. Each json file contains all the information regarding the device in terms of sensors data and each machine has an unique file name. Moreover we were able to simplify further the process of creating new topics: the user was require to only give the name in use on their terminal and select only if was Enum or Json type. Boolean, Numeric and String were automatically configured
Mobile version
Given the nature of this service, allowing users to receive real time notifications regarding a specific device, we built the interface to be responsive and to be easily used on mobile devices such tablet or smartphones. In doing so we extended the possibility to configure the service on different workstations.
MQTT service configuration
Outcome
The service was well received within our customers. They were able to being notified ASAP when machines stopped and, especially during night shifts, this reduced downtimes. Subsequent to the initial use case for receiving a notification we were able to create more use-cases providing support on different stages. For example a wifi button once pressed from the operator can immediately notify the line manager that assistance is needed. As a result of this experience, I learned that when designing a product for a new environment, bringing in the engineering team early on in the project really helps things to go smoothly down the line.