Be Secure

• Client: an Italian producer of respiratory protection products

• Project duration: Oct-Nov 2019

• Roles I assumed: User Researcher, UX Designer, UI Designer

• Project goal: 

Create a tool to organize and monitor the activity of the safety manager of a company that use PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as respiratory mask. An important step is to integrate the hardware part (the mask) into the system.

Research

I began by doing research about the figure of the safety manager.

In a context where the accident at work is a national emergency, the Health and Safety Officer is a mandatory and indispensable figure for maintaining a safe and healthy work environment. Every day the RSPP have to do different activites: training, bureaucracy, supervision, risk assessment, equipment and PPE maintenance. It’s a job that involves responsabilities of various levels and periodic comparison with the people for whom is responsible as well as torwards menagement/ownership of the company.

With our UX team we plen how to conduct field research to formulate hypothesis testing. Then we have examined the research partecipants to ask a series of questions to some industry professionals. 

“The most critical aspect of my work is represented by the emergency. Its management involves time that you often do not have. For delivery and production problems we need to solve the problem in a short time and in an adequate way, not putting a piece in it.”

Marco Rossi

After talking with a RSSP I realized that the project is very challenging. Defining the problem and setting the objective was difficult.

We met some safety managers. 

At this point, I have noticed similar critical issues encountered by people:

•  “It would be really nice to have a unique prevention system that would allow me to cover more risk factors like welding, fumes and falls from a height. An easy to wear product that completely protects the head.”
• “There should be a system that warns me when the mask filters need to be changed. We can’t delegate this to -when you smell it-”

The possibility of working on the menagement of the activities, the control and the respect of the rules was therefore immediately clear.

This can be achieved by focusing on 3 goals:

• Know in advance which devices will be replaced
• Organize the activity for yourself and for people called to participate in training courses;
• Have precise and punctual data on the use of the devices, product life times to evaluate their effectiveness on the activity
• Consult in any circumstance manuals and safety data sheets of the products treated during processing
• Dispose easily of data relating to employees, outcome of health checks and consultation of the use that makes of the devices

Personas were directly involved in the desgn process, acting if it will be useful to monitor in real time the compliance with the safety rules and the use of devices by their employees.

For each Personas we individuate needs, challenges and opportunities that we can size in this project work. 

The possiblity of working on the menagement of the activities and the control of the respect of the rules was therefore immediately clear.

After collecting all the necessary information with the team we managed a Costumer Journey Map, to analize the working day of the RSSP.

This analysis highlighted the points of frictionand the opportunities for improvement the interaction with PPE.

Competitive Analysis

At this point we wanted to know if there were any app to help the Safety Manager in his work. Among there were Job81 and 4HSE.

We also analized management software like Trello and Asana. From this reasearch it emerged that we had to focus on the mix of hardware and software to anticipate choiches and create useful statistics to organize the future work.

Information Architecture

Now, that we have the themes we organized them in a system. We also kept in mind familiar patterns from the competitive analysis.

This step was very challenging because we have to choose which functionalities could be the most important to our audience. Empathizing with my users I discover that monitoring, pianification and statistics were the focus of our app. 

We mapped out the user flow and kept iterating until it felt cogent and logical. And then we organized them based on importance. We choose familiarity and importance of the information over logic and complexity to lessen the cognitive load.

Early Designs

We start sketching and every component of the group come up with a different visual solution. Following the user flow and it’s priorities.

Then we discuss and try to merge ideas identifying the best solutions.

Let’s focus on the “Monitoring” page

Monitoring page was one of the biggest struggles we have during the process. We had to visualize the departements in an intuitive way. I tought of representing the single departement with a bubble, creating a systemin which emergecies are highlighted by colors and the general risk is indicated by the size of the bubble.

Moodboard

I arranged images, colors and type to reflect Company’s style and feel.

Next, I moved to XD where it’s easier to move things around. 

The primary pages are the dashboard, maintenance, monitoring, pianification, substances and materials, statistics, and ppe management.

Results A/B Testing

We tested 2 version of the dashboard. 

After running the A/B test, we found out that a more “graphic” overview immediately gives an idea of the problems, in real time in the various departments. Realizing it quickly improves quality and safety work. A predictive section help us preparing the next working day.

“I understand that in the red bubbles there are problems and I feel invited to interact with them.”

Pietro Rossi

UI Development

We quickly moved from the wireframe side to the creation of a prototype. We kept a simple layout trying to use as few colors as possible. Personally I took care of the logo and the creation of the various icons.

Thanks for reading!