Honeywell is a Fortune 100 software-industrial company that delivers industry specific solutions that include aerospace and automotive products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes, and industry; and performance materials globally.
As a long standing company, Honeywell has extensive experience in utilities, oil and gas, connected building management and aerospace technologies. Looking at the current market of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV / drones), Honeywell wanted to leverage that experience and knowledge to provide a safe and efficient alternative to critical, manual routine inspections.
I was hired to lead the end-to-end experience product and service design for the Honeywell UAV team. In June 2017, our customer focus was on utility line inspection. Partnering with Ozark Energy Cooperative out of Fayetteville, AR, I conducted various onsite workshops to help both sides uncover opportunities and value that could be created by such a service.
The collaborative workshop activities included:
Upon returning from the initial visit, I put together a product and service strategy with a roadmap to communicate to Honeywell leadership and to be able to drive the vision for the development teams. The strategy was fairly clear and simple, create a product and service offering that would deliver a safe and efficient alternative to their current inspection routine. This service and product had to also be scalable and competitive within the market. (According to the U.S. Department of Labor, utility line workers have one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the United States. For utilities, using a drone for inspections offers safer and more cost-effective means than existing methods using helicopters, cherry pickers, ladders and walking inspections.)
The key to the product and service offering though was not just the collection of the data, this was nothing new to the market as there are hundreds of companies providing this service. What had to be delivered was a full end-to-end experience and actionable data analysis. The end-to-end experience included four major phases: planning, execution, analysis and reporting. For analysis, Honeywell’s proprietary algorithms and deep learning models would make sense of the terabytes of data coming in and identify the needed action.
To deliver on the strategy, I had to outline and storyboard the new workflow with variable approaches depending on time and budget. Meeting up with the client again, I held a review session to validate the storyboards and prototypes. This also included a demonstration of the drone itself, the intel Falcon 8.
After validation, the work began with a short window of time for testing and delivery. The objective was to design and develop a multi-channel experience that could be easily adopted and non-disruptive to the current workflow.
For the planning, analysis and reporting phases, I designed a web portal that would give Honeywell the ability to create and manage client profiles and accounts. The web portal would also feature a section for creating and managing drone pilots and fleet management. Further, this tool would be used by the client to setup their projects and jobs, create and manage inspector profiles, assign work, organize the data being collected in the field and offer the ability to generate actionable reports.
For the execution phase I designed an experience where the inspector would be able to have access to the drone camera view and controls without the worry of how to fly it. This design would be implemented on a Windows Surface tablet, giving the inspector an easy way to capture the desired optical and infrared images and the ability to annotate any identified trouble spots in real-time. This afforded the inspector to focus on their role as an inspector and to not worry about being in harm’s way.
The development of the project was conducted by two teams that I ramped up and led. The team responsible for the web portal was located in Mexico City, a Honeywell Tech group, and the team responsible for the tablet app was the Nerdery, a leading Minnesota tech agency. I traveled to Mexico City for two weeks to be able to work closely with that development team to ensure they had the same shared vision. Two months later we were able to deliver the product as promised and within 120 days from whiteboard concept, Honeywell had a signed contract from our first client.
For more information regarding project details, successes and failures, iteration and execution. Please contact me.
I have two decades of experience leading and coaching interactive and design teams to work smarter, better, and more collaboratively. I am currently the Lead User Experience Designer for Honeywell's Aerospace Commercial Drone team in Golden Valley, MN.
