Trackunit presents telematics software, hardware and services for fleet management. Trackunit’s IoT systems and devices gather and process real-time data from vehicles to deliver actionable, proactive and predictive information, granting customers with a data-driven insight.
Trackunit makes this information available to service technicians in charge of keeping the machinery operational through Trackunit GO mobile app. Trackunit GO sends push notifications to technicians, and generates error reports about the troubled machine in order to locate it and fix it.
Trackunit’s promise to its customers is to eliminate machine downtime by 2025. One strategy towards achieving this goal is to offer service technicians with practical solutions to fix the machinery errors.The challenge faced in this strategy is how to make the knowledge from experienced service technicians available to less experienced ones, as well as how to make previously successful solutions easily accessible. Our job is to define a platform to share that knowledge between the technicians and keep track of their solutions.
Members of the team:
- Helene Busk Madsen
- Ismail Akcin
- Peter Schou Dear
- Sally Chantal Betzer
- Zelmade Zelmade
- Leyli Iranpour
Concept video
For the past two weeks we’ve gathered all the knowledge we’ve accumulated through courses, interviews and acting, to produce our final concept video. We c align our first and second ideas along with a reward system. With how the system is now, repairing the machine could take a long time, but with our solution, the repair time could be downsized. With the gathering of information from experienced technicians, novice technicians can access information that could make repair time easier. The app will have several new functions, such as “TOOLS” where the technician can see which tools are needed for the repair. There is also going to be a “CALL” option,The calls have the option of being recorded for future use, and either get deleted if they were not successful in repairing the damage or saved if the technician succeeded in the repair. After a successful repair, the technician will answer three questions:
1: What tools did you use to fix the machine?
2: Is there anything the next technicians need to know about this machine?
3: Did you face a difficult issue, and if so, how did you fix it?
These three questions will inform the next repair, regardless of who does it, so that each repair will be done fast and everyone will benefit – and should that not be incentive enough, a rating system will inquire the company bosses to motivate their employees to contribute to the shared database along with them being known as collaborators with Trackunit. In essence, they will be motivated by branding.
The Design Process
Introduction:
Trackunit aims to reduce downtime and speed up the time technicians need to fix machines. The challenge is that the technicians need to fix the machines as soon as possible so they can rush to the place of the broken machine but without having any idea of the right tools they should take. Another thing is that they may lack the necessary professional experience to fix the specific error.
On Monday 16.09.19 we were introduced to U-Crac and the groupworks. Afterwards we went through knowing more about each other’s background, and skills so that everyone would know the contributions others could make in problem-solving and conducting the project. Later we met Christian Christensen who was the contact person and the product manager for the Trackunit Company. He explained the case and talked about the challenges they have. We got answers to our question, and a better view of where to start and how to find the best solution.
On Tuesday 17.09.19 we met in the group and discussed the case. We checked information on the Trackunit website and a community website built for Schneider Company to get a better idea of a long-term solution that had worked in similar cases before. Then we prepared some questions for an interview with Martin, one of the technicians of Loxam, one of the companies using Trackunit, and a phone interview with Christopher who recently started his position in Trackunit but previously worked for 8 years for Schneider Electric Company. Then we decided to delegate and planned to go with two semi-structured interviews by Helene and Ismail in Danish, in Frederikshavn the next morning, and the phone interview in the evening by Karima and Leyli in English.
After the interviews on Wednesday 18.09.19, and Thursday 19.09.19 we met and discussed the new information and considered the different perspectives we were presented with. We focused on finding out where the technicians usually get the information they need, and how that works. From the first interview we learned that the Luxam technician barely uses Trackunit. He told us that he could see the potential for a platform to share information, however, he would not want to spend extra time or energy on contributing to the fulfillment of his responsibilities for his job. We found that the technicians do not actually mind sharing the information, so all hope was not lost!
Then a clearer idea of what Trackunit wanted was forming: a way for less experienced technicians to have access to the experience currently inside the head of more experienced technicians. The challenge? How do we get these more experienced technicians to share their knowledge?
Having this in mind, we were assigned to act out different scenarios with objects in sand (object theater). This was done to prepare scenarios for brainstorming ideas. This led us to make an affinity diagram and discuss the most important aspects for our problem-solving. We formulated some ideas based on what we had so far into an affinity board.
Our Innovation Track Formation
On Friday 20.09.19 we worked on innovation tracks.
After our discussion as we wanted to find and evolve our solution based on the criteria Trackunit wanted, we decided to make a big innovation track which was going to be filled out in collaboration with Christian based on six different innovation tracks created by us, so we could decide which qualities we should definitely take into consideration. We considered the downsides to each of the six tracks, so we could present that to Christian from Trackunit.
We explained our innovation tracks to Christian, and fortunately he immediately understood the need to focus more on some elements than others. We got helpful tips among which we could point out the importance of a moderator and how we need to motivate people to contribute. With Christian we appeared to arrive at an agreement about which direction we needed to go.
We arrived at the following main quality criteria:
– Convenient knowledge sharing
– Ensuring quality in the answers provided
– Creating an experience and providing reward
– Collaboration with users
On Tuesday 24.09.19 we discussed ideas and how we could integrate them into the apps the technicians already use – namely Trackunit Go and Trackunit On. We created our first idea (represented in video form).
On Wednesday 25.09.19 we discussed further and realized that most of our ideas were already being implemented in TrackUnit’s existing apps. We needed a clearer idea of exactly what was missing that we could contribute. We tried acting out the situation so we could find out exactly where in the process knowledge sharing becomes relevant. Based on this we improved upon our idea (we made a video of this too).
We started working on our video Wednesday 25.09.19 and Thursday 26.09.19. Through the process of creating a storyboard for the video, we had to think about every step and trough that we expanded upon our idea. We also faced yet again the terrifying aspect of motivation. We created an idea for that too. We finished the storyboard.
Friday 27.09.19 Everything got filmed and edited together. This text got written.
Sketches of the concept
First Video – The First Idea
The sequence of drawings shows our initial idea. They show the technician getting an error message. He can then access a database through the app, where he finds a list of Q & A’s about the specific error or machine, which will assist him in both bringing the right tools and figuring out how exactly to fix the machine.
Second Video – Acting out the problem
Here we are acting out a technician’s workday, played by Sally. It shows her first fixing the machine (a bag). We are trying to understand where the issue arises.
Third Video – Intro For The Final Concept
We created this title card for our final concept. Take it.