Bot Issue Handling
I led a redesign for a core product suite for remote operations at Nuro. This involved understanding the problem space fast, making foundational changes to future-proof the product, and following up with improvements after our initial demo. As a result of this project, the team was able to save 45% in our projected cost per delivery.
Timeline
4 weeks
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma
1 Product Manager
Engineering team
Operations Team
Problem Space
How might we allow remote operators to resolve diverse bot issues effectively?
Nuro runs regular missions with its passenger-less bots on public roads. However, when a critical issue arises, a human operator needs to remotely connect to the bot and assess the problem, before releasing the bot back to Autonomy.
At the time that I joined this project, our team was working towards incremental milestones in the form of technical demos. For our initial demo, we asked the question: how might we allow remote operators to resolve multiple, diverse bot issues effectively?
Outcome
Product Redesign
Original Design for Monitors
Prior to adding any additional features for our upcoming demo, the experience was in a dire need of a re-design.
In order to get stakeholder buy-in, I analyzed user pain-points and presented an alternative vision that would be implemented for our initial demo.
Old design
New design
User Testing Bot Issue Mental Model
With the new layout, I experimented with various mental models with our operators to see what type of bot resolution made most sense to them.
Ultimately, operators preferred a simple suppression model to minimize user error and maximize speed.
Identifying Painpoints Post-Demo
After our initial demo, I found that our Controller experience lacked in user guidance due to a high cognitive load in front of a 5-monitor set-up. As such, I re-evaluated how the experience could be further improved.
Controllers are faced with high cognitive loads. The experience needed more user guidance to make each bot resolution more intuitive.
Injecting Guidance in Controllers
I presented multiple options with varying levels of guidance to our operators.
Ultimately, we went forward with option 3, for its flexibility and wealth of information.
Option 1: Simple Modals
Option 2: Chatbot
Option 3: Flexible Map
Success Metrics
45% Projected Cost per Delivery Saved
90% User Satisfaction
Reflections
Don't fall into the trap of easy fixes
Under the pressure of a high stakes demo, it's easy for a team to sacrifice the UX and produce a not-so-usable MVP. I learned through this project that it's important to speak up for our users, even when no one is requesting it. As a result, we were able to push key foundational changes in a short span of time, all the while leading to a successful demo with positive feedback from our operators.
Shadow your users
While the tablet and web experiences had many overlaps in product features, the actual user settings were vastly different. As such, capturing the distinct pain points for each was important so that we don't obscure either set of users. The benefit of having internal users allowed us to quickly act on observations from shadowing their experiences.