Short description of problem
Trackunit is an app that builds bridges between service technicians and other stakeholders within the building sector. Trackunit Go contains a large palette of solutions, the service technicians can locate the problem area and many other features.
LOXAM Denmark is number two on the ranklist of rental companies. The company supplies to the constructions, industrial, public-, service- and private sectors. LOXAM employees are users of Trackunit. We asked Martin Jensen, service technician at LOXAM, about his view on Trackunit Go:
”We have access to Trackunit Go, but I don’t really use it. (…) If we don’t have the solution to the error after trying, we have no other option than to call a colleague. It’s about minimizing time.”
Martin Jensen, user of Trackunit Go, works for LOXAM
Trackunit have promised their customers that they will eliminate unwanted downtime, by identifying and prevent machine errors. Additionally, Trackunit wishes to create a platform or feature where experienced service technician can share their knowledge with less experienced technicians. Trackunit Go shall be the digital tool for the service technicians everyday work life.
Members of the team:
- Jakob Nørholm
- Kamilla Pasupathy
- Peter Schlieker
- Omar Alafandi
- Sanne Hyldahl
Concept video
The concept video describes two different scenarios. It starts with an inexperienced technician trying to fix a broken machine, but having a lack of knowledge. He is calling three different colleagues before one can finally help him out. This action is a waste of time for three people.
The second scene shows the inexperienced technician trying to solve the same problem, but this time he is using the Trackunit In platform to ease his work and prevent him from disturbing other colleagues.
Trackunit In is a hybrid-app, available on all platforms, which combines the knowledge of many technicians in one platform. Beside a search function with different filters, a direct forwarding by selecting an error code in the Trackunit Go app is available. Other features are:
- Answering to questions/error codes
- Up- and downvoting of answers
- Ranks depending on received votes (apprentice, expert, genius, superhero)
- Increasing responsibility with higher ranks
The Design Process
At the first day of U-CrAc, we quickly got to know each other before having the first meeting with Christian Christensen, product manager at Trackunit. He explained the case to us and answered many questions the groups had about the case. At home, we did some research on different fields, like Trackunit, the community forum of Schneider Electrics, the online forum stack overflow, our interview partner LOXAM and different motivation models for online communities.
The next day started with a short group meeting to understand the case better. Later on we shared the results of our research and prepared questions for both interviews on Wednesday and Thursday with LOXAM and Trackunit.
On Wednesday morning, Kamilla and Sanne drove together with the other both groups to Frederikshavn to interview Martin Jensen, an experienced service technician of LOXAM, a customer of Trackunit. After a tour around the company the groups interviewed Martin, so all of our questions, was from different points of view. Some of the findings from the interview was that Trachunit did not meet the service technicians needs, and thus did not make their workflow more efficient. The biggest surprise was that the Trackunit software is not installed on all of LOXAM’s machines.
The next step was the creation of the whole scenario in a sandbox using many different items. Afterwards, we made an affinity diagram to cluster and bundle the problems of the case.
In the afternoon, Omar and Peter called Kristoffer Debois, Vice President of Customer Excellence at Trackunit. Main part of the interview was his experiences with the development of the customer service community forum of Schneider Electric. Actually, he would create exactly the same forum again for Trackunit. For the more technical questions regarding Trackunit Go, we could ask his coworker.
At the end of the first week, we were assigned to find quality criteria for different innovation tracks which should be presented at the next case partner meeting at the following Monday. Therefor, we developed four personas:
- passionate inexperienced technician
- passionate experienced technician
- forced inexperienced technician
- forced experienced technician
On monday morning, we created innovation tracks with quality criteria and prioritise them for the four different persona, most of our criteria were similar (fx. usability, community, knowledge exchange, etc.). The team also prepared for the case partner meeting to present and summarize the innovation tracks. In the afternoon the meeting with Christian Christensen took place at StartUpWorks and we got some very useful feedback. On the other hand, the group started to work on the concept description for the U-CrAc homepage.
Tuesday afternoon, the team got creative in designing the TrackUnit IN front page and login layout with the StandScan. Some photos were taken to create a video of the starting screen of the hybrid app. Furthermore, draft ideas were considered as different scenarios for the resultant video, which will be presented on Monday.
To follow Tuesday work, the team moved forward upon the different scenarios for the video. To summarize, first outline is when an inexperienced technician arrives to the broken machine and do the typical job by calling other experienced colleagues to find someone who can help out. Second outline is when the same guy solves the cracked machine by using Trackunit IN. These scenes were recorded and the other half of the team started mockups and wireframing of the app using Adobe XD.
On the next day, we finished recording the scenes and animating the app. So we could start cutting and editing the main concept video. Before that, we did a timelapse video to practise some editing skills and gain experience.
The last day of the group work was reserved for finalising the concept video. We recorded the needed voice over parts and edited the whole sound of the video. Then we updated our part of the U-CrAc homepage. Afterwards we prepared for the presentation on Monday.
Sketches of the concept
Video 1.
The group used the Standscan with a small green screen in the background to visualize how the start of the Trackunit In app should look like. The changes of the different words starting with “In”represents one of the ideas the group came up with.
Video 2 – Time laps calling
In this video several unedited videos of the technician in front of a green screen were combined in a time laps.
Video 3 – Time laps of the field study and the design process
In this video the visit of the company LOXAM and some recordings of the design process are modified to summarize our team work.