CAT UX Design Challenge

August 2022 - November 2022

CAT UX Design Challenge

Myself and a team of 2 other designers redesigned the internal work order tracking system for Caterpillar Inc. as a part of a competition against other teams of designers. We designed the website to be used on desktop computers. Our design solutions were shown and judged at CAT on World Usability Day.

The Client

The client that we worked with was Caterpillar Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. Each year, they host a design challenge for User Experience Design students at Bradley University to create a design solution for a given issue within their company.

The Challenge

Each team was challenged to redesign CAT’s internal work order tracking system to make it more efficient and user-friendly. This alone came with its own litany of difficulties for us. For one, the system that they currently had in place already seemed to be visually clean, efficient, and easy to use, at least from our perspective. We would have to get particularly creative if we wanted to improve what was in place. Secondly, we were unable to actually have access to the website, having to rely solely on a demonstration video that they sent to us. This demonstration only showed the major actions that users would be taking, so we were unsure what certain elements would do. These two things caused us some difficulty, but we were able to come out of it with an idea.

The Process

The Idea

The process of creating the design solution began with generating ideas for how the current work order tracking system could be improved from its current state. We decided that since their current system was already well made, we would build off of the ideas present within it. In particular, we liked the dashboard with all of the currently accepted work orders in one place in sequential order. This would help to remind the user’s of all of the work orders that they had accepted and keep them in order. We had the idea to create a visual representation of the order progress to give users a more concrete understanding of how far along the work orders are. We also had the idea to create a priority flagging system that would allow users to flag particular work orders as more important. The major point of deviation with our idea was turning each work order tab into a dropdown menu that gave more information and allowed for additional actions to be taken directly from the dashboard. The particular pieces of information and actions were all available in the current version, but they were scattered across multiple screens. We wanted to localize it all into the main dashboard to make it as easy as possible to find.

The Research

Next the team moved onto researching the users of the work order tracking system in order to get a better understanding of their needs. Through this research, it was discovered that the main users that would need to be focused on were the CAT dealerships and their customers. This led to the creation of two different journey maps for each of these users in order to find particular pain points within the current process of work order tracking. One major takeaway was that the longer the cycle of an asset being fixed takes, the more irritable both the dealership and the customer become. Another takeaway is that communication between the dealership and the customer can also become a point of frustration. These would be kept in mind as the team went forward.

The Wireframes and User Tests

The next course of action was to create the wireframes for our design solution. We were debating on whether to make the additional information and actions come in the form of a dropdown or a sidebar. This led us to create two versions of the wireframes, one with the dropdown and the other with the sidebar. We turned each version into a simplistic prototype that would allow users to get the feel for them. We then conducted an AB user test in order to find out which version of the dashboard would test better and which the users liked more. The results showed that the dropdown version tested better of the two and the users stated that it made more sense to them since it better separated the information. This made it clear that it would be best to use the dropdown menu moving forward.

The High Fidelities

With everything in order, it was time to create the high fidelity mockups and prototype for our design solution. For the color scheme, we had to stick to the CAT design system and use their signature yellow along with various blacks and whites. The work orders in the list were made to only list the most pertinent information in them before expanding with the dropdown as a means of not overwhelming the user. We were ultimately able to fit many different features into this singular dropdown. We added the ability to view the asset information, customer information, asset history, and contact history in the dropdown. We also allowed the user to add coworkers to a notification list, change the work order description, assign portions to coworkers, communicate internally and with the client, and change the general information all from one page. Each of these functions are separated from one another via the usage of cards for each section. Other options like creating estimates, creating inspection reports, adding media, and printing could not all fit within the dropdown. To remedy this, we added buttons that would create pop-ups that would allow users to take on these actions without leaving the screen.

The Results

With the completion of our high fidelity mockups and prototype, we had successfully contained what used to be many pages worth of information and actions into a single page. Users would no longer have to go searching far and wide for any of the system’s features which would hopefully lead to a lower level of frustration. The condensed nature of it all would allow for the dealerships to more easily make changes to the work order and communicate with the customer, which would help to ease the pain of the work order process. The prototype allows for users to test most of the system’s features to help ease them into the new experience. While our team’s design solution did not end up winning the challenge, it was still a great way to build my skills in design, critical-thinking, and teamwork.

View Prototype