Everything that can be automated will be automated by "internet of things"
Cervello is an advanced IoT device management platform that’s designed for the future connected world. With its intuitive capabilities and user-friendly interface, you can build and scale your IoT applications from the ground up with utmost ease, flexibility, and security.
My role
Lead Product Experience
User Research
User Experience Design
Visual Design
Platforms
Web Application
Website
Design System
iOS App
Cervello “An IoT Platform that integrates, monitors, automates and controls any device or system”. It is a multi-tenant on-premises platform. That targets integrators and software vendors to build vertical smart solution.
The internet of things, or IoT, is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. (Source: IoT Agenda)
Through 4 components Cervello can integrate with things to collect, analyse, and monitor data to store it and take actions based on predefined logic or machine learning and represent a friendly user interface to interact with people in the smart world. The main pillar in a digital platform is the user, how the user will act and how the application will interact to facilitate the capabilities of the platform to get users' goals done.
Allow any user around the world to build their smart solution.
Mission
To represent Cervello “on-premise” Platform in a cloud version, that user can access it anywhere.
Objectives
Connect and manage devices.
Empower less-code App Builder.
Remote access and monitor devices.
Framework
Dual Agile.
Google Sprint.
Lean process.
Cervello on-premises serves in several areas, it works well although it has some solvable issues. When we need to go cloud we have to maintain highly needed features in the market, insert some competitive features, increase product value, and engage our users with the product.
On-premises software is located and operated within a user’s data centre. As such, it uses the user’s computing hardware rather than that of a cloud provider.
Cloud software, usually hosted in the cloud or accessible via the Internet, is run and managed by a third-party provider. All of the troubleshooting it requires is handled by the provider’s staff.
Cervello on-premises is not capable of serving all targeted users due to difficulties in reaching them and offering a free trial version, add to that sync local network to their cloud servers.
Due to the decision of launching a cloud version we need to keep the same structure of the current version and empower real-time collaboration between users who work on the same project from different places.
Users have to duplicate their solution -built-in applications- to resell it more than time due customise it manually every single time according to user needs.
It’s difficult to get user onboarding easily and they have privacy and security concerns. The customer who is purchasing the platform does not have to be the actual user who uses our platform.
The user doesn't view the accessed workspace specifically and can’t manage it as well. It's hard to monitor users' activities when they work in the same workspace at the same time.
Cervello integrates with multiple systems, get and send data, but can't fulfil the gap when it comes to static reports to support other restricted systems and services.
Understanding user needs
Getting users’ pains and gains. It's time to make assumptions! we will validate. We started our research to get users’ pain and gain points. By making some stakeholders interview and users research.
Research Plan
At first, we defined two things to figure out which questions should be asked to have the most impact on our product. Research goal and how we will implement the results.
We have identified ten large-scale issues that our research will attempt to shed light on.
While many users try to create new accounts they have to fill many required fields to register a new account, due they have some issues in security and privacy concerns.
The user has multiple workspaces of Cervello, which might be for integration, device manager and application builder and every workspace has a special URL according to a subdomain.
Users have to duplicate their solution -built-in applications- to resell it more than time due customise it manually every single time according to user needs.
Cervello integrates with multiple systems, get and send data, but can't fulfil the gap when it comes to static reports to support other restricted systems and services.
Many users might work at the same time on the same workspace which could cause conflict and activity not tracking as they should.
Most IoT solutions depend on multi external systems, for collecting data and taking some action, this costs the solution provider investment and time to implement the rest of the middle wears for each solution.
Reselling applications built on Cervello is the most scenario, users can’t handle and transfer payment on consumption to their customers.
Due Cervello provides many features, but it doesn’t fill all gaps to empower users to use it without depending on external service or custom code to achieve their goals.
While people use hand-held devices to monitor their work anywhere they can’t do the same with Cervello.
Most of the users are developers, they know well how to write code and enjoy this activity, but they are always stuck with building new projects or they find it hard to design a professional system architecture for every solution.
Research
Immediate
User Research
To provide actionable results in time for the MVP, we began a testing process to evaluate the existing on-premises app interfaces. We determined which elements of the design work best, which are most usable, and which features are most compelling while finding out what doesn’t work and shedding light on how users prioritise the feature set as a whole.
There we did some competitive analysis to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the user experiences provided by competitors’ products. The techniques used included two rounds of usability testing and, potentially, some focus group research.
Persona Creation
In addition, we began a process to create a profile of the existing user base and to better understand how they act with the system. This will -we hope- uncover opportunities for the service to expand into and provide a closer fit to people’s lives, further encouraging its use.
Buyer
Persona
User
Persona
Activity Diagram
Activity map observed our actual user activities through the on-premise app and their expectations. We started with user flows, then translated it to journey map line, to discover the best sequences. Later we did our initiative journey map, to collect all known data in one table to be more accessible to our team members and able to add on.
The initiative journey map, contain gain, pain points, user feelings, and opportunities as well.
Synthesis
Research Findings
There Are Many Metrics And Synthesis, that Needs To Be Arranged And Get Priorities According To Our OKRs.
Affinity map
Affinity map and grouping problems in clusters helped un to create synergy and take decisions.
There we did some competitive analysis to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the user experiences provided by competitors’ products. The techniques used included two rounds of usability testing and, potentially, some focus group research.
Prioritisation
Problem Statements
Projects & Features
ONBOARDING
USER
MANAGEMENT
ASSETS
REPORTS
DEVICE
MANAGER
UI BUILDER
LANDING PAGE
DESIGN SYSTEM
WEBSITE
ALARM
iOS APP
Conceptual solution
User Flows
How user starts their journey and specify their needs.
How the user will move from module to another and Link between their data.
All modules in so abstracted look to connect our users journey through the application.
Sample of Architecture of one module.
Structure
Balance user needs with a business goal
It is so important phase, but the most. We trying to set the architecture that we will build our system and experience on, it will hard to replace it in the future and every change might make us lose everything by confusing our users because of bad structure. So we took our time to build it in detail and cover most cases. It's not easy to maintain if there are any leaks.
Defining Scope
UX Roadmap
Why UX roadmap?
UX roadmap it somehow belongs and follows business roadmap, but not the same. UX roadmap sets experience value in order, to deliver our business goals while we achieve the user's needs so we can always balance between both business and user's needs. But we cannot present it in one iteration, huge effort and more time needed so we priorities it according to this roadmap.
This is sample of how we set a UX map after prioritisation and effort evaluation.
Card sorting helps us to arrange our ideas.
UX Principals
The main rules that will guide us to build one consistent design.
Seamless.
Driving design into a funnel, so no leaks.
Security Over Usability.
When experience matters, security is a target and Usable design is just away.
Defensive Design.
Defensive design is always on the lookout for what problems may arise
Context Over Consistency.
It’s better to be right than consistent
Ideas to Action
Idea cards
Idea cards abstract all information about problem, value proposition, capabilities, and why we solve this problem. Every idea card should has a specific goal, restrictions and limitation as well.
Roughly Wireframes
Why we do roughly wireframes?
Wireframes are a great tool to get your clients to focus on what you want them to think about early in the design process. We use roughly wireframes to convert our thoughts from just ideas in our minds to put it on papers, it helps us to focus on idea itself and make accurate decisions.
Setting-up Process
Workflow
Choose methods and framework
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Actions
Forming Design Sprints
We sliced our valuable features into design sprints to do make sure that we are committing to the product roadmap and deliver our design on time.
Hi-Fi Wireframes
Visual Design
Trying to translate ideas to action in a user interfaces
Instance landing page
Controlling user's organisations, teams, members, and projects of the certain workspace.
Accessing account settings, privacy sets, and track data usage as well.
First time login view
Creating first organisation, team and first project while onboarding.
Instamce's Member -Not admin- view
Showing only entry points of organisations, and teams without ability to create.
Signing up
Sign up by email.
Sending email to our user with a verification link, user supposed to be redirected to the next screen when this mail not in our users database, but if the user inserted the already registered email, the security email will be sent to email notify them that we dedicated someone tries to signup with this email. The user could be go to signing up page and ignore this email, or go to change their password.
We expect to solve the issue of searching about the certain email if it's already registered or not, to attack this email. We're trying to increase the security level by this experience and maintain our users privacy.
A Skippable screen
To short our onboarding steps, we allow the user to skip this screen, but as our recommendations we will notify the user while they are using our platform to confirm their dedicated region and fill out the missing information.
We have any kind of phone verification and it's impossible to force users to use a unique number.
Onboarding
Setting instance up
Choosing a unique name, makes users able to login their instance directly, by creating a subdomain link of their new instance.
We automatically create first organisation, team and get our user ready in seconds.
How we manage instances
User can join multiple instance, and they will be redirected to choose instance if they have an invitation link, but they can own just one instance with 14 days trial.
User Management
Organisations
Teams
Members
Organisation Management
Organisation Landing
User able to access, and control his organisation through a landing page contains the latest updates of projects, teams and shows the organisation's members sorted by activities.
Team Management
Team Profile
This screen shows projects created in a specific team, so user can sort projects by name or activity or devices capacity.
Members Management
All team members
Another tab in team profile shows all team's members, to track and mange access and activities on a specific project.
instance's members
All members joined the owned instance, only instance owner or admin can access this page.
Organisation's Members
All members of a specific organisation, they belong to any team under a specific organisation.
User profile
All about a specific member of instance, and all of projects and teams they participated in, and some of the latest activities across instance.
Take Control
Remotely integrate, manage, connect, monitor, automate, and control any device.
Device Management
Take control on your device Remotely
Device management
All Devices in one place
User can manage all of the devices in a specific project, privy to connectivity, uptime, and count of telemetries.
Monitoring
Be aware of any alarms, event
and Telemetry change
Real-time Monitoring
Alarm, events by Location
User able to monitor every alarm or events by location, can track the alarm and define where it happen and severity on the map, grouped by vertical modules.
Alarm Tracking system
User can track all aralms of specific project from any device and manage workforce tasks sent to technicians to solve a certain alarm.
Events Tracking system
User can track all of project events, sorted by time and grouped by devices.
Automation
Rules
Commands
Scheduler
Command Templates
Automation Scheduler
Account Control
Control Consumption
Manage account
Account Security
Account management
Personal info & account security
User able to customise all settings specially time zone that different form region to another and it affect alarms and events time. User can set authentication method for more security.
Subscription Management
Payment, Billing and used resources
In order to have many services and user will able to invite others to their instance, User can manage payment methods, billing address and control used resoucres.
Be on top of things
Group, Manage, and get real statistics.
Asset management
Reflect your real world to the system
All assets list
Assets made for user to reflect the real structure to the system and manage their assets by one action, it applies all devices and another assets related or belong to a certain asset.
Dashboard
Asset Attributes
Asset Alarms
Asset Events
Asset Location
Asset Telemetries
Asset Relations
Asset Hierarchy
User can set the real structure and manage their city or smart solution by building the hierarchy, parents, children and sibling through two types of links, belong and relates.
Reports
Know-all from one place
Data Extraction Reports
Listing all reports
Is a module to solve data feed and syncing with other integrated system, such as billing or workforce systems, to be read and translated to insights helps our client's users to take make decisions around their business or assets management.
Report creation
Report Capabilities.
The user is able to create a very customised report to extract some of statistics to be received and collected in another system they are integrate with trough APIs or directly to FTP, otherwise they can save the data extracted as a CSV file or get it in a JSON formate.
Report execution
User can easily excute any static report by configure some of preferences to be extracted manually or occur reports according to schedule to integrate with FTP or send dynamic statistics through APIs.
Design Hand-off
Developer Guide
User interface Abstraction & Knowledge Transfer.
We handed off features through abstracting visual design to comopnents, we clustered guide in 3 groups, Exist components; which is already coded in our design system and simply we can refer it to be used, New components need to be developed, and generic style guide.
Documenting
Feature Catalogue
Feature catalogue is a new innovative method for documenting every feature from early stages to after development and iterations. It designed to document and track changes along features to reduce time, avoid rework and understand the journey of creating every single feature.
Sections
01- Summary.
02- Problem Definition.
03- Targeted Persona.
04- Solution.
05- Value.
06- Validation.
07- Description.
09- How it works.
10- Scenarios.
11-Post & Prerequisites.
12-Acceptance Criteria.
13- API Documentation.
Iterations
Every iteration is documented as a thread in one document to deduce technical rework of designing and coding.
