Wouter Buning
UX Designer

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

A series of desktop applications tailor made per machine linked to an online portal to validate the test results.

  • "We are testing over 30.000 samples this year. And that number will keep on growing. It's seasonal work, so we get help from a lot of temporary employees.

    It needs to become much simpeler.
    If you ask me, it should be an app with 1 button."

    Project objective as stated by the Head of Quality Lab from HZPC

Problem statement

  • User friendly: We own state-of-the-art machines for sample testing. They come provided with very complex vendor software. In addition we use ingenieus scripts of our own to analyse the test results. This needs to be made accessible for temporary workers who are sometimes unschooled.

  • Automation: The current systems are not fully connected and dependent on manual interference more than necessary.

  • Time saving: Validating the test results is cumbersome and very time consuming.

Phase 1: Research
Defining the problem
A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Remote Interviews

Talking to users to

  • Understand the current situation

  • See the work process and its disturbances

  • Separate and priorities the different workflows

  • Find out the purpose of process steps

Adopting the role of the intern

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Walking along through the process and watch people perform their job is always very valuable.

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Visualising the primary process

Every project I aim to visualise the overall process. This proves to be vary valuable in communication between team members, key users and stakeholders throughout the whole project.

Phase 2: Design
Designing the solution
A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

The solution direction

This of course is a team effort. My role here is to guard the usability, ask critical questions, come up with multiple ideas for possible solutions and keep the spirit positive and fun.

Our greatest challenge
To go from separate parts to 1 integrated and scalable system
A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

In the diagram the black circles represent our solution and how they fit in the lanscape to form an integrated solution

The result:

A hybrid solution for the Quality Lab:

A mix of desktop applications connected to an online validation portal

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Basic Wireflow of the Validation Portal

To review the outliers we introduced a web portal with a simple but powerful dashboard.

This is a sketch of the final structure.

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Interaction Design

I think it is clear by now that I am a big fan of pen and paper. Every project produces a ton of sketches like these to discover countless possible directions and alternatives.

UI Design

Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Screen design displayed in a mockup
Phase 3: Testing
Deliver, Validate, Improve
A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

User Testing

We were very lucky that at virtually any moment we could let key users test our new software build.

We tested each part of the solution, the assumptions it contained, the responsiveness af the application and the network, and so on.

A more efficient and smarter way of quality testing

Ready while you don't wait anymore

During acceptance testing we reached a big milestone!

To photograph a pallet containing 8 trays of samples took 1.3 minutes. Before it took over 3 minutes.

And people even felt they worked less hard doing more than twice as much the work.

The feedback:

  • "I feel it is possible now to literary grab someone from the streets and put them behind the machine. The app is really that simple now."

    "The new dashboard is just great.
    Only 1 button per test.
    Just the way I wanted ;)"

    Hoofd Quality Lab HZPC

90%
working remote
> 30%
time saving
(on average)
60%
less screens
due to app integration
5
fresh fries lunches