SkySecure
The snapshots of dashboard for the anti-drone GUI
My contribution
UI design - establish SkySecure design system (desktop & mobile)
Rapid prototype - update GUI to apply the new anti-drone features developed by the hardware team
Design evaluation - gather user feedback from the client support team and global sales team to iterate the designs
Tools
Figma
Adobe suite
Jira / Confluence
SkySecure design system
Design challenge 1
Sort out & fix exisiting UX problems
When I joined the team as their first designer ever, I took over a product without any UX design work and had been complained by the users very frequently. While it's hard to grab enough resources to conduct user research from the beginning in a tech-driven company, I managed to do a heuristic evaluation together with the developers.
How did I find out and fix these criticle UX problems with the team
After I completed the heuristic evaluation with the team, I was able to sort out the usability problems in a 30-page test report at the end of the sprint. Here are some of my findings and how I improved it:
Design challenge 2
Show detections that we don't know where they are on the maps
I was confused at first but later figured out the nature of this problem after a deeper conversation with the tech team and product manager. As the hardware research team made some progress, the sensors now are able to detect NDF (non-direction-finding) drones. However, the location or direction of the drone remains unknown.
The nature of this problem is to visually present the NDF drones on the maps
I crafted 2 UI solutions and luckily we had 2 upcoming software releases on the roadmap. So I was able to run an A/B test with real users to validate the designs.
In the A/B test, solution A got better feedback from users, so we kept it in the later software versions
Design challenge 3
Build a design system to facilitate future development
When I first took over the product, there was no visual consistency throughout the UI, and I could find user experience problems due to the lack of standardization everywhere. So as I gradually fixed those problems, I found it was a good chance to build up a design system to guide future development and maintenance.
Design objectives for the SkySecure design system
In 2 months, I delivered a design system with interactive components on Figma, a tech document that helps align with developers.
Design system and tech document I created for Skycope design
Final takeaways
The experience as a designer in a tech-driven company could be challenging: people didn't really understand the impact of UX design. Meanwhile, it can also be opportunities: they are willing to try different approaches and there is more freedom for me to craft my designs. Working on an IoT changed my mind about the designs, like, knowing how to efficiently convert tech development into languages that users will understand.