Research & interaction design for Genset Monitoring Solution ( Case Study)

Overview

This was my first project where I worked on UX design in 2014 when I had no idea of UX design. All the activities done was natural & spontaneous based on the customer pain points. The Project was done when I was working at Informage technologies based out of Gurgaon, India

This project was to design IOT based Genset Platform for our customers in Nigeria, Africa.

Customers/ Users

Some customers we worked for were KFC, Vodacom, Sprectanet, GT bank, and many more.

Most of our users were the big organization that had multiple office locations or stores, like banks & Restaurants.

hence they have to manage & operates all the gensets across the country.

Roles & Responsibities

Company : Informage Technologies

Initially, my role was to be a Pre-sales only, but later I lead Research & product design part. because of this project we created one more child company named Datiot with Informage technologies where we partnered with hardware & Development companies to make it possible.

I lead the entire project from partnership to Product strategy & design.

With me, I had one more colleague who also played an important role from a Hardware design point of view.

Problem Statement

In 2014 Electricity was a huge issue in Nigeria & most organizations' power source was mainly Gensets. But at the same time, they had issues with maintenance, fuel thefts, performance and they wanted to monitor & control Gensets remotely.

At that time only 40% of Nigeria's population was connected to the energy grid and the power supply difficulties are experienced around 60% of the time. At best, the average daily power supply was estimated at four hours.

hence you could understand how much dependencies were or privately owned gensets for big corporations. Cost, the performance was a major issue for them.

Scope and Constraints

The Project was not Planned, it came out of need. Before we started this project in-house, Our company used to outsource solutions to our clients. At the need to design it In-house came when I went to Africa for Pre-sales process to meet our clients and figured out the solution we suggesting them is not meeting their all needs.

The initial step was to interact with our partners in India to design it according to our clients but they were not ready to make kind of change as scenarios were totally different from their India market.

So we decided to do it In-house. But the timeline we had only 6 months to release it with our customers. So we focused only on Genset specific IoT platform rather than keeping it genric from start.

Process

We started the process with basic research, interviews, site surveys to understand the Use cases & scenarios. At that time I was not aware of design thinking but I did things on my own & followed my personal plan of action. but the core to design thinking was same, serving the customer needs

Research

I conducted 5-10 different site surveys, had interviews with Executive to the maintenance guy on the field & tried to understand their pain points.

Some Site Survey Snapshots :

Genset Scenarios

After visiting multiple sites and doing interviews with most of the customers, We listed all the possible genset scenarios for which we need to build a solution.

There were numerous scenarios present in the market. But this document contains the major scenarios. These scenarios helped us in understanding the customer requirements & the solutions which can be implemented on them.

The scenario's consists of different combinations of tanks and generator with the twist of pipe valves. Pipe valve may seem simple but it makes the system a little complex. To understand the principle behind the pipe valve I am explaining it below with an example.

I will consider here the case for “Single generator with single internal tank & single external tank along with pipe”. If in this case, we monitor only the external tank & operator fills the internal tank via external tank & then closes the valve. We will get the details of the external tank only. & we will never come to know about the status of the internal tank & vice versa.

So for this case it’s essential to monitor both the tanks.

But If we consider the same scenario without the pipe valve, the situation gets a little easy. Now from this scenario, it’s obvious that the internal tank remains always full, as there is no pipe valve in-between & there will be a continuous supply from the external tank to the internal tank. Hence we can treat the internal tank as a buffer.

So for this case, we can only monitor the external tank. It will make the calculations a little complex on the software platform & also diminish the cost of hardware.

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Note: Diesel tanks come in different sizes & shapes. They have got different height patterns, From 1 meter to 5-meter tanks exist in the market. So sensors should be selected as per the same.

Same principle is to be applied for all the other scenarios

Single genset with single external tank

Single genset with internal & external tank with pipe value

Single genset with single internal tank

Single genset with internal & external tank without pipe value

Single genset with internal & two external tanks with Single pipe value

Single genset with internal & two external tanks without pipe value

Two gensets with common external tank without pipe value

Two gensets with two external tanks with 3 pipe pipe value's

Two gensets with single common external tank with 3 pipe value's

Two gensets with two external tanks without pipe value's

Two gensets each having internal tanks and one common external tank with 3 pipe value's

Two gensets each having internal tanks and one common external tank without pipe value's

Two gensets each having internal tanks and two external tanks with 3 pipe value's

Two gensets each having internal tanks and two external tanks without pipe value's

Single gensets and two external tanks without pipe value's

Parameters & features identification ( Scope)

After 1:1 interviews we also identified what are the different parameters & features important for the customers to monitor, measure performance & control the asset. The same parameters will be helpful for them to create secondary data to measure the performance & execute daily activities.

Below is the list of parameters which we identified during our research:

Monitoring Parameter Details

Fuel Status

Fuel Volume, Fuel Level

Engine Status

ON/OFF status ( event based)

Engine Run Hours

RTU Status

GPRS signal, RTU backup battery status, RTU ON/OFF status

Generator Battery voltage

GPS location of Generator

Energy parameters

Electrical energy( KWH)

Electrical Load

Frequency

Electrical current

Power factor

Remote Control

Control is also one important feature which was to be added to the system for eliminating any catastrophic action or any other emergency issue. Remote ON/OFF control of the Generator was key player in this field.

Reports & Analytics

Reporting Was another important aspect of the monitoring system. From the above-mentioned parameters we mostly get the status of the device. But to get a more detailed summary, reports are to be created. Reporting should be created in such a way that the user could download it manually via platform & also can be sent via email to the user.

Reports will be in the form of different frequency periods viz, daily, weekly, monthly & annually.

Types of reports;

Tabular, Graphical & Pie chart type

Solution

Post Identifying all the artifacts, we started to identify the right hardware partners for sensors, Internet gateways to create a hardware part of the design. My colleague helped in create the hardware design integration.

Now was the part of Digital product design. Our company had no idea about UX, neither did I. So I naturally thought through there should be some blueprint or direction which could help our development team to move faster & have some aligned direction.

I was not supposed to do it, but I did because I had the passion that we should build the right tool for our customers. So I just took A4 sheets and started creating the structure & design how should the platform look like. Within 1 week I was ready with more than 70+ A4 sheets having wireframe & interaction design flow for the product. This project is very important to me, as it was my unintentional first step to UX design

Some Shots of wireframes I build for the project

To view the entire wireframe structure see the PDF linked below :

Genset wireframe

Final visual design & actual product cant be shown here, as it has company privacy issues.

Outcomes & lessons learned

The entire solution was built in 6-7 months & we released our product with our clients in Nigeria & our clients loved it, we did implementation with 4-5 major organizations.

Though the solution & product had some technical issues this was just the beta release. Post that team iterated the issues & made it better . we also faced some issues with hardware & gateway communication initially. but it was also improved over a period of time.

However unfortunately in 2015 ending Nigeria had economic crises because of their Oil. So we had to drop our business from Nigeria region at the child company was dissolved. But the Informage used the same platform capabilities for the Indian Market for Energy management Platform and the company was known as Supreme solutions then.