SPACE EVENT GENERATOR

A simulation tool that speeds training and analysis for operators and defense specialists who need to visualize and plan for space-based threats

Role

Lead UX designer (solo) and Agile facilitator - Owned end-to-end UX for a pre-release physics simulation product. Acted as a communication bridge between aerospace scientists and engineering, while establishing Agile processes in a team with no prior design support.

Challenge

Guide a newly formed team through the planning and design phases of a complex new physics simulation software, navigating stakeholders’ many differing opinions about what should be created and how the features should fit together.

Solution

A new product that manages and simulates aerospace scenarios in a single integrated workspace with high-fidelity physics, an expansive library of simulated objects, and an interface that guides operators and trainees in how to get the best possible data and output.

THE PROCESS

Business Goal

With the ever-increasing profusion of satellites and debris above Earth, spacecraft maneuvers and other events in space are difficult to model, execute, and evaluate. Multi-million-dollar machines are on the line, and customers need the ability to plan out and visualize these risky situations with high-fidelity physics. Scattered tools existed, but building a workable scenario while skipping from one software to the next, broke the flow of information and caused the time and cost of planning to balloon. The business wanted to offer an all-in-one software that would help guide operators without extensive astrodynamics training in building and analyzing data from complex aerospace events.

Understanding Users

Project was pre-release, so there were no existing customers to interview
Interviewed aerospace scientists and SMEs within the business
Reviewed user inputs and requests from similar products previously released
Reviewed customer feedback on existing gaps in the market for training tools
Investigated existing tools that would handle smaller pieces of the future project's workflow
Validated each stage of design with stakeholders, engineers, and scientists to align expectations

Users Needed To...

Shorten their training and planning time, which could take months
Create and manage aerospace scenarios even without much astrodynamics expertise
Visualize threats with high-fidelity physics and meticulous accuracy
Select realistic space assets from a variety of system libraries
Select and configure spacecraft maneuvers and other events
Generate and export scenario reports
Modify scenario settings, particularly sensor cadence
Review system error reports to troubleshoot plans

Design and Leadership Challenges

Working with limited user access due to the nature of the product and business goals
Creating dynamic workflow diagrams to align divergent opinions among scientists and engineers on the MVP scope
Championing the adoption of the corporate design system, reducing custom widget development time
Authoring 30+ in-context help tooltips to simplify complex astrodynamics inputs for non-expert users
Using visuals to build consensus on the way forward when there were many differing opinions
Training the team in Agile processes by guiding planning, breaking down the effort, and writing clear requirements and tickets
Negotiating for usability improvements without bloating scope
Designing with strict security best practices throughout the system

Development Story

When I came into the team, the company had been planning for this new product for several months. There was a gap in the market for a consolidated tool that could handle complex, multi-event astrodynamics simulations, and we were well staffed and positioned to develop a software offering to fit that need. As with other projects at this company, I was the first usability analyst most of the the senior developers and scientists had worked with. Leadership tasked me with both supporting the team’s design needs and helping the scrum master in establish strong Agile processes within a group who had typically worked in ad-hoc silos on previous projects.

I first needed to understand what we were building and why. I began with interviewing our in-house aerospace scientists, engineers, and project managers to understand the market, opportunity, company goals, and user needs. It quickly became evident that several members of the team had very different ideas about what was to be built. To begin building consensus, I started with a workflow diagram. This had to be reworked several times concurrently with wireframing, as the requirements and their priorities continued to shift throughout planning and development. Still, diagram after diagram, we came closer to agreeing on the goal and were finally able to make a plan for the following sprints with the full team in agreement on the project’s MVP (minimum viable product).

By the time this project got underway, my UX team and I had already established a style guide of usability standards, complete with reusable UI elements from another concurrent project. By reusing the visual styles, iconography, and interface layouts specified in the style guide, we were able to boost consistency within the company’s software and speed up the design and development work. SEG had many unique widgets and features that required new analysis, but the UX team’s thorough stylistic guidelines made the high-fidelity mockups and red-line specifications much easier.

A notable challenge with this project was that I needed to write all of the interface copy, including the in-context help. Due to the complex physics and math underlying the event creation forms, simple field labels could leave users confused about exactly how the inputs would interact with one another to determine the results. To aid understanding, I wrote help fly-outs for almost all fields, revising them multiple times to make the language comprehensible to new users.

Gallery

OUTCOMES

Outcomes

Reduced design turnaround time by leveraging the existing style guide and reusable component library
All team members had a much better grasp of Agile for subsequent projects
The first version of the product was released and was then expanded and improved over subsequent Agile development cycles

Key Takeaway

When building for highly technical domains with no existing users, the designer must act as the primary translator between science and software. By using visual diagrams and wireframes to align stakeholders early and leveraging a robust design system, we delivered a complex simulation tool on schedule while establishing a repeatable Agile process for future R&D projects.

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