LIDAR Mesh Editor

Application to Create and Process Mesh Files

UX Research

NOTE: The exact details of this work are confidential and therefore I have limited the description to high level details and the methods I used

What I did...

Duration

A new app by LIDAR Toolbox in MATLAB

Contextual Interviews,

Workflow Design,

Feature Prioritisation and Heuristic Evaluation

7 weeks

About

I, along with a UX Designer and a Developer

Team

TLDR: I worked on carrying out the core UX Research for a new application scheduled to ship to the five million users of MATLAB

Here's the summary of the high-level research and design processes we employed for the application

Introduction

What are LIDAR Meshes?

Point Clouds can be converted into surface meshes and further be used as a means for reverse engineering or quality control. Meshes created created from the conversion of such point clouds are called LIDAR Meshes.

Why was the app needed?

Surface meshes are being increasingly used to store information about 3D models that are widely used in industries. The Lidar Mesh Editor app introduces surface mesh workflows and closes the market gap in the consumer electronics area.

Introduction

1. Understanding the User

Through a series of secondary research using internal data mining (Event Reports, Enhancement Requests, and MATLAB Community Forums), I was able to gather key customer contacts that would be interested in the feature.

Using this information, I established a basic user personna that could be used for the later part of our processes.

Understanding te User

2. Contextual Interviews

Contextual Interviews

To get an in-depth understanding of a typical mesh-creation workflow, I decided to talk to the users directly.

Sampling of the participants for the study was done through a set of screener questions asking for their domain expertise and day-to-day work. Further, I also tried to include people from various demographics to ensure we covered a variety of perspectives and use cases

9 Interviews

6 Industries

4 Regions

Interview Questions

These are just some sample and high-level questions. The complete list of questions has been omitted to maintain confidentiality

Competitive Analaysis

3. Competitive Analysis

Through the interviews, I was able to learn about some of the most common tools that our customers were using for their work.

This helped me and the development team develop our business strategy and, at the same time, benchmark the functionality we provide against the market standards

GeoMagic

Mesh Viewer

Cloud Compare

Mesh Lab

4. Defining the Workflow

Using the insights gathered through the contextual interviews and the competitive analysis, I was able to lay down the data points and visualize patterns that helped us chalk out the workflow for the LIDAR Mesh Editor application.

The entire workflow could be divided into three parts and I, along with my designer worked towards stitching all the pieces to deliver a good user experience

These are just some sample and high-level features. The complete list has been omitted for confidentiality

Defining the Workflow

5. Designing the Application

Once the workflow was established, we engaged the cross-functional team to participate in design discussions.

Competitive Tools were demonstrated to them, along with the presentation of the requirements for the app we envisioned.

Through a two-day workshop, we came up with low-fidelity pen and paper designs which were later formalized by designing in Figma.

The participants were divided into two teams, and we ensured that there was an equal representation of different roles (QE, Documentation, Development etc.) in both the teams

Low Fidelity Sketches

Working Area Alternatives

Toolstrip Alternatives

High Fidelity Designs

These are just some sample and concept designs. The complete set of screens have been omitted for confidentiality

Concept 1 : Edit workflow as a seperate window

Pros: Dedicated workflow, no situation of measurement annotations getting effaced

Cons: More options on the toolstrip area

Concept 2 : Edit as a standard tab

Pros: Better accessibility

Cons: Scalability might be an issue

Stakeholder Review

Designing the Application

6. Stakeholder Review

After coming up with two different concepts for the app design, it was important to have further discussions with the team and reach a consensus for the final designs.

Development Team: To ensure that the designed solution is technically viable

Application Engineers: To ensure that the solution would match users' needs

UX Department: To ensure that the application meets the organization's design standards

Feedback Received (Highlights)

Concept 1 : "I don't favor the modal tab. You have a whole dedicated window for this app - there should be ways to use toolstrip and panels to edit without resorting to modal tab. Modal tab feels disorienting."

Concept 2 : "I think if you were to go through this design, edit shouldn't be at the end of the toolstrip - it feels pretty fundamental"

Export: "should be a check mark icon if this is the main call to action that we went to give to the users"

"Consider hiding Convert to Import Cloud section when it is irrelevant"

"Overall the app feels pretty amazing and could be really beneficial to the customers"

7. Validating the Solution

After addressing the feedback for the design, I decided to have a quick hallway testing to ensure that the app does not have any major usability issues.

The reason hallway testing was chosen as a method was because of limited time constraints. Since the company works on waterfall release cycles, the app would have to be deferred to another release otherwise.

Although the feedback we received might not been the voice of actual users, this method helped us gain a variety of insights through more testers in a limited time.

Participants were recruited from the upstream and downstream cross-functional teams

Tests Conducted

23

71 NPS

Validating the Solution

Future Work

The application is scheduled to ship in R2024a of MATLAB and while the hallway test might represent an overall positive attitude in favor of the application, a full-fledged Usability Study is planned to ensure that most bugs and enhancements can be captured before customer adoption.