Sky Racing

Desktop App

Project Overview

Sky Racing wanted to update their operating system for their Director's Assistants (DA's). They wanted to create a new interface for this system that would meet the current day needs of their operators and create a smarter and more efficient workflow.

Project Details

Duration: 4 months

Team structure:
• 1 x UX/UI Designer
• 1 x Creative Director
• 2x Software Engineers

My role: For this project I worked alongside my Creative Director, the stages that I was responsible for were:
• Research analysis
• Wireframing
• Prototyping
• Usability testing
• Visual design
• User interviews
• Personas

Sky Racing's broadcast graphics interface was very complex, relying on a 20 year-old system and making it difficult for new DA's to learn and use.

The Problem

UNCOVERING USER NEEDS
We started out by looking at insights from the current DA's about how they currently use the interface and system, as well as their main needs, objectives and pain points with the system on a typical work day. We also conducted interviews with a few DA's to get more of an understanding of their jobs and their needs.

A contextual inquiry was also undertaken. I observed how the DA's work in their studio, their behaviours, motivations and how they interact with the interface and system. From this C.I. and the insights from the operators, I was able to create a persona for our DA/user that we were re-designing the interface for. We used this persona to help guide some of our design decisions as the project progressed. We also received a lot of input from some of the senior DA's during the project, as we worked together very closely to make sure that we were creating the most useful product for them.

Understand

DIVING INTO DESIGN
After getting a better idea of our user's behaviours and needs with the system, we started ideating and sketching out concepts for the new interface, keeping our user's needs as well as the business' goals for the new system at front of mind.

In collaboration with my Creative Director, we selected the best ideas and began wireframing and iterating on our concepts. We kept in mind what the current system looked like and all of its functions and tried to improve on that based on our user insights.

Below are some of the initial wireframes and illustration concepts:

Design

USABILITY TESTING & VALIDATION
Once we had finalised our initial design concepts for the new interface, we got feedback from the DA's and made a few rounds of iterations to incorporate more functions that they need to perform their jobs.

After we implemented this feedback we conducted usability testing on our initial prototype with some of the DA's at Sky Racing. Through the usability testing we were able to validate that the new interface that we had created was a welcome change from the archaic 20 year-old interface and it was less complex to use. We also discovered some more functions that the DA's needed and tried to implement the most relevant ones into our next iteration, while still keeping in mind the goals of the new system as being more streamlined and intuitive.

This conflict between DA's being used to all the functions of the current interface and wanting to see most of them carried across to the new interface and our goals of wanting to create a more streamlined and less complex interface was an ongoing challenge throughout this stage of the project.

We worked to overcome this conflict by holding regular meetings and communicating openly with all parties associated with the project. We worked to come to compromises based on the business goals, developer and design solutions and the DA's needs and goals.

VISUAL DESIGN
After synthesizing the insights from the usability testing, I started to go in to the visual design phase of the project with direction from my Creative Director. I designed a few different visual design options and got feedback from the DA's as to which one worked best for them based on aesthetics and their needs of what would be most beneficial for them to use during a 10-hour shift in a dark studio.

Below are a few of the visual design concepts:

Validate

We presented these design concepts to the DA's as well as PM's and product owner and this dark interface design of version three was the favoured design. With this unanimous decision and based on more feedback from DA's, I proceeded to iterate on this chosen design.

Below is the final design of the interface:‍

This project was quite a large undertaking in not only re-designing a 20 year-old operating system but also working together with several different stakeholders. It was a challenge to keep in mind the goals of the different stakeholders while also trying to present and justify our design solutions. Open communication and compromises helped anchor this project and led to a product that meets most of the needs of the stakeholders involved, while also meeting the usability needs.

CDR

SCHN

Final thoughts