Product Design at CERN
The Business Computing group at CERN is responsible for the software that facilitates the Organization’s day-to-day operation. Can you work with the various product teams and make optimal use of your limited availability to design the experiences?
A selection of work I've done over the years.
Digital Warehouse - Picking tool
CERN’s material workshop processes dozens of internal requests for custom made material. The warehouse contains a big assortment of materials. CERN’s engineers can order material needed for the experiments and can specify unique dimensions and characteristics for their needs.
The material workshop had a sophisticated but manual order processing methodology. A review of the process lead to the optimisation of the processes, in conjunction with a new digital interface, optimised for industrial tablets and phones.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Contextual inquiry, Stakeholder workshops, focus groups, Prototyping, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy.
Touch surface optimisation after user tests
Contextual inquiry revealed that warehouse employees pick orders with gloves. The initial design took this into account but the industrial tablets caused issues. Size adaptation improved the UX.
Icon only mobile view caused confusion
The tablet version uses column headers who indicate the state of the order (ready, preparation, cutting, finished). Only showing icons on mobile caused confusion so I moved to text instead.
Digital Warehouse - Task management
The warehouse operators used to plan all incoming requests, assign them to workshop areas and employees. A new task management tool automated the assignment and prioritisation of incoming tasks, but also offered the opportunity to adjust and monitor the daily operations. Operators work from their desk, next to the warehouse. The interface was optimised for desktop usage.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Contextual inquiry, Stakeholder workshops, focus groups, Prototyping, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy
Pension fund
CERN has its own legal regulations and own pension fund. CERN’s unique legal characteristics require a tailored application. The redesign of the entire application was not only needed because the old system’s technologies caused issues. One of the main advantages of reviewing the design was that all processes could be optimised and automated.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Contextual inquiry, Focus groups, Business Process Analysis, Functional Analysis, Flow Charts, Prototyping, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy
CERN Locations
CERN’s campus consists of a complex network of roads, buildings and experiments. Each building and its rooms has specific properties that need to be accessible for administrative, maintenance and cleaning work. The creation of the Locations applications enabled all personnel to search, view and manage all necessary room properties and relations.
I’ve worked closely with a development team and stakeholders (including key users) to restructure the system’s architecture and redesigned the interaction and UI design.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Stakeholder interviews, Functional Analysis, Flow Diagram Workshop, Information Architecture Workshops, Prototyping, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy
Impact mobile
Maintenance to CERN’s machines does not only involve sophisticated planning, it also deals with strict access management. The in-house developed enterprise planning tool supports the project management but it doesn’t allow to easily view or change activities and related access rights. A new mobile app gave operators and engineers the possibility to gather and change information regarding their maintenance work on the spot.
Together with them, and with a dedicated development team, I designed the mobile app from scratch, focussing on only the essential functions that take away administrative obstacles.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Stakeholder Interviews, Business Process Analysis, Functional Analysis, Flow Charts, Mockups, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy
MERIT
To streamline annual appraisals, for all of CERN’s employees from all departments, a new tool was put in place. This tool allowed direct supervisors to give qualifications to their supervisees and gives department heads and CERN-wide administrative specialists the opportunity to get insights in trends and the effect the qualifications and bonuses would have on long term financial forecasts.
After conducting interviews with all personas, I designed all aspects of the tool and worked with the development team to support the interface implementation.
Role
Design lead (UX and UI design)
Activities
Personas, Contextual inquiry, Business Process Analysis, Wireframes, User testing. UI Design, Development consultancy
IMPACT
IMPACT is CERN’s in-house project management tool that provides all necessary functionalities to coordinate planning and monitoring of maintenance on CERN’s extensive network of machines and experiments.
Over the years, I’ve worked on various small projects to increase the scope of the platform and / or to improve its usability.
Role
Design consultant
Activities
Depending on specific tasks: usually a combination of interviews, mockups, user tests and developer consultancy.
EDH - Enhanced Document Handler
Most of CERN’s approvals and document handling are executed in a robust system that found its origin in the 90’s. This legacy system has been an essential part of CERN’s operations for decades and consists of an extensive list of documents and administrative processes and workflows.
It’s technically impossible to redevelop the entire system from scratch. It’s perhaps not even something you want because the system is embedded in CERN’s employees behaviour.
I’ve consulted the core development team for years and worked on improving the overall experience of the system. In addition we improved or redeveloped full documents.
Working with experts in various domains, related to the specific documents, and closely monitoring the end-user’s behaviour, allowed us to gradually move the system to a more contemporary design and improved UX.
Role
Design consultant
Activities
Depending on specific tasks: usually a combination of interviews, mockups, user tests and developer consultancy.
