I was the UX Lead for two years on the Next-Gen Operator Station program for Self-Propelled Sprayers/Spreaders. My role on the program included leading all UX activities for converting equipment functionality from the 2630 display to the Gen 4 display and integrating with the ongoing command arm and hydrohandle updates for the following sprayer/spreader models: R4023 | R4030 | R4038 | R4045.

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Be a Subject Matter Expert

Part of my responsibility on this program was to understand all of the capabilities of the sprayer/spreader models, including which features were used more by specific user personas.

Redesign Existing Functionality

My role included tracking and determining how each piece of functionality implemented on the 2630 display could be re-architected and designed for use on the Gen 4 display.

Conduct User Research

To understand how to take advantage of the opportunities that come with a redesign, I visited many customers and observed them working with their existing systems.

Integrate with Next-Gen Command Arm

Throughout the project I assisted testing the command arm and hydro-handle redesigns and made sure they aligned with ongoing display interface design decisions.

Program Planning in an Agile Environment

A big portion of my responsibilities for this program involved leading the sprint runway UX activities to stay ahead of all of the development scrum teams. I maintained a master list of all functionality that would need to be implemented in the Gen 4 display, which controllers/components needed to work together for each item, and which sprayer/spreader models did/did not have each feature.

I coordinated with a core team from systems engineering, project management, marketing, and PV&V to work out priorities of the features for the initial feasibility build and beyond. For each piece of functionality, I further tracked how it was going to be grouped with other elements in the interface, so if multiple development teams needed to work together on a screen it was planned for in the overall schedule.

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Becoming a Subject Matter Expert (SME) through Contextual Inquiry and Training

While I was able to utilize insights from numerous research efforts from different program departments, I also needed to become literate on both how the sprayer/spreader equipment operated as well as how customers actually utilized the equipment in their operations. To that end, I took a week-long internal training class on sprayers/spreaders, and I also put together mind maps for each model detailing how all of the systems/subsystems worked together.

To gain a further understanding of how customers used their sprayer/spreader equipment, I visited many customers around the Midwest and in other parts of the US as well. During these visits, I rode along and observed how customers interacted with their displays and operator stations, keeping notes about pain points and customer comments. On certain visits I was able to ask prepared research questions and discuss what improvements customers wanted to see.

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Collaboration Workshops

Because the sprayer/spreader functionality did not live in a segregated environment but was rather an integral part of other display features (such as Section Control and AutoTrac), I facilitated or helped prepare several collaborative workshops with internal teams or actual customers. These workshops included facilitating a Design Studio with the entire operator station UX team to help determine how universal applications on the display could work across different equipment types. I also helped prepare card sorting exercises to run with customers during validation events, and I was part of a team that performed an heuristic evaluation comparing key tasks on competitive displays with Deere’s 2630 display.

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Prototyping and Usability Testing

I created and maintained a prototype built in Expression Blend/C# and installed it on a touchscreen tablet to continually test my design proposals during customer visits. I also created a comprehensive program test plan and tracked test goals, methodology, and outcomes in the Product Verification and Validation (PV&V) group’s internal proprietary software.

Customer Understanding

I tested for comprehension by having users attempt to complete tasks using the prototype and asking them questions related to values or data shown on-screen.

Customer Efficiency

I tested for efficiency by tracking time on task and error count, and I monitored designs for improvement across iterations.

Customer Satisfaction

I tested for satisfaction by administering an SEQ question after each task and administering the SUS questionnaire after full tests.

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Design Briefs

The largest portion of my time on this project went towards iterating through each group of features based on the program plan and creating a design brief summarizing learnings and desired experience direction. One of the main purposes of the brief was to align the full team on research insights acquired from different departments (including UX customer visits/usability tests, marketing insights, PV&V results, and customer support feedback from existing customers). The other main purpose was to give the assigned project interaction designer and development teams context around the following items:

• Sub-System Vision

• Problem Overview and Definition

• Current Solution Description, Customer Goals and Pain Points

• Use Cases and User Scenarios

• General Requirements

• Constraints/Rules

• Opportunities

• Feature States Description

• Run Page Modules and Display Shortcuts Needed

• Related Design Patterns

• Validation Considerations

• Schedule/Development Teams Assigned

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Interaction Design Collaboration

For each group of features that went into a design brief (usually aligning by display “app”), an interaction designer created an interaction flow detailing all of visual layout requirements. The interaction designer and I would go through several iterations of an interaction flow to make sure all requirements/states from the design brief were accounted for. After an interaction flow was in a solid place, I scheduled a design review with the larger team to go over the flow and have final updates made based on team feedback.

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Customer Validation Event

For one of the program’s feasibility build validation milestones, I partnered with the marketing team member to organize and conduct a customer validation event at John Deere ISG’s test farm. The event took place over two days; the first day we had a group of dealers participate as a pilot run. The second day we had 8 customers attend. My contributions to the event included creating the schedule for rotating customers through stations, creating the test plans/scripts and testing assets for 4 out of the 8 stations, and personally running one of the stations. I also recruited four additional station leads from other teams to attend and utilize the event for their projects. After the event, I analyzed the data on four of the stations and contributed to a report that I helped present to the sprayer and ISG leadership teams. Leadership members noted that it was the best collaboration they had seen between UX and sprayer factory employees.

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While I was not able to personally see this almost five year program to its completion, the next-gen operator station with the Gen 4 display successfully launched on sprayers/spreaders in February 2017. I am thankful to the entire team and amazing individuals that I got to collaborate with along the way and also for getting to experience working on such a large and complex program that helps feed the world.

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