The Redesign of ThingWorx

What is ThingWorx?

ThingWorx is the industry-leading, award-winning Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology platform developed by PTC, a leading computer software and services company. It provides enterprise-ready IIoT-specific development tools and capabilities that enable solution builders to:

• Rapidly build and deploy game-changing IIoT solutions that power smart, connected operations and products

• Accelerate their time to market

• Deliver transformative business value

• Make end-user experiences more compelling for web, mobile, and Augmented Reality

ThingWorx contains a broad set of features, including a variety of connectivity options, application development tools, analytics, and augmented reality all built around a single, real-time view of a physical object in the digital world-the Thing Model. With Thingworx, solution builders can create scalable and secure solutions that provide high level of return on investment.

Interviews

The gathering of user input was performed with internal users from the tech support teams, pre-sales teams, and developers who use ThingWorx.

Utilizing Lean UX methodologies, I needed to quickly gather critical information to help me make design decision. I interviewed internal stakeholders with the following goals:

• Learn how the software was being used.

• Learn the pain points users experienced.

• Learn the functional benefits and shortcomings of the software.

• Learn the improvements users were seeking.

During the interviews, we additionally discovered that:

• Users felt the UI was outdated.

• Users needed a responsive UI.

• UI did not accommodate localization as well as the complexities of the ThingWorx platform resulting in numerous bugs.

Ideation and Design

After the initial interviews my team and I began collaborating on ideas.

We held numerous white boarding sessions to discuss how to approach the problems discovered during the qualitative UX research. Working closely with the TVP of UX Development and a couple of key engineers we were able to generate user workflows that later led to UX wireframes. The initial wireframes were built using Balsamiq. I later transitioned to Axure once it became available at PTC.

Many iterations of wireframes took place and were later developed into high fidelity visual designs. The artifacts were presented to the Senior Vice President (SVP) of ThingWorx Platform R&D for feedback.

User Testing

Once we had a live prototype produced by the engineering team, we conducted UX studies at the annual LiveWorx Conference.

The goal of these UX studies was to validate our design with quantitative research methods. During these quantitative UX studies the user is asked to perform strategic tasks using a interactive prototype developed by the engineering team. The user's feedback gained directly influenced the next improvements of the UX for ThingWorx.

Specific areas of interest where:

• Can the user successfully interpret the data in the UI?

• Can the user understand the navigation?

• Can the user understand the CRUD method as it applies to the properties of an entity?

• General feedback on the new UI.

• Additional functionality requests.

During this process, I have learned that team work is everything. Being responsible for three major areas of a global product (UX Research, UX Design, and Visual Design) is a lot of responsibility to bear for one person. In order to be successful, one must have the support of a great team. You must be willing to fail, learn quickly, and iterate often. PMs and TPMs need to adjust their expectations and react accordingly. The way to get things done in this type of a scenario is via Lean UX.