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Cortex
Manufacturing Execution System
Role: Product Designer
Team: Project Manager, Full-Stack Engineers, Development, Production Workers
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Blender, Procreate
Background
The Thales DIS Montgomeryville manufacturing plant is responsible for the production of credit cards for banks around the world. The production process is a complex, multi-step endeavor that coordinates dozens of employees, machines, and materials to ensure efficiency and fulfillment of orders.
Problem: Disjointed communication & processes
Production floor workers and staff were using different software for various steps of the production process, paper was wasted on work order slips, and tracking + supervision of machine status and materials was inefficient. This led to production delays and miscommunication between workers.
Goal: Create a centralized manufacturing execution system
Thales needed one application on all company devices which aggregates all production floor data, automatically updates machine statuses and alerts, and has options to submit work/material orders.
Understanding Thales DIS Workers
Main Users: Machine Operators
Secondary Users: Planning & Logistics Team, Engineers, Maintenance Team, Supervisors
Through the interviews and surveys, four key needs of the Thales DIS staff were identified:
1. Digital supervision & visualization of production floor.
2. Tracking productivity, efficiency, and quality of manufacturing.
3. Tracking materials that are used.
4. Automatic updates on all company devices about machine statuses and alerts.
Brand Identity
Branding Cortex was an important step of the process. It was important for the visual design to reflect the functionality of the software, represent the production process in ways that workers would connect to, and bring color and vibrancy to the production floor.
While our engineers were building the information architecture, I began designing the logo.
Original brainstorming sprints explored "beacon" as the name of the software.
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The idea was that beacons provide a light or a path to follow - representative of what the software would do. However, after the first iteration of the design, our PM suggested we consider "cortex" as an alternative name. This felt like a more accurate representation of the intended software, as it would act as a "brain" that manages data and inputs, and coordinates responsive actions.
After several iterations of this idea, we settled on the final logo designs below.
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The next step: create UI components.
I designed component sheets which included machine icons, alerts, buttons, and pop-ups.
The core visual design goal for Cortex was a clean, minimal interface. Colors used were black, white, and the Thales blues.
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Using the logo and UI components, I designed staff ID badges.
Crucial design focal points were the steps or machines in the production process (collation, screen printing, embedding, etc). The hexagon was chosen to represent hexagonal architecture which is used to make software systems testable, flexible, and decoupled.
Usability testing and edits
Feedback from production floor workers revealed that while they appreciated the high-tech nature of Cortex, they wanted more personal, human-centered visuals for the application landing page.
This application would be used by production floor workers, engineers, and management for a large part of each workday - staring at a bland, sterile interface for hours each day would be mentally draining, demoralizing and boring. We needed to create a virtual environment that was visually interesting, approachable, and comforting.
After polling preferences, we settled on creating landscape backgrounds reflecting each season. Below are the prototypes that I created on Adobe Illustrator.
Reflections
This was my first user experience industry job where I worked with real world constraints. I learned what it means to be an advocate for users, and how important it is to push for equitable design of applications used by staff within a product company. I was fortunate to work in an environment that gave me creative freedom to propose and lead various parts of the product design process. It was a fulfilling experience because I worked in various roles from user research to wireframing to visual design.
