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Configuring Cellular Equipment
Project type
Application Redesign
Role
UX Designer and Researcher
Date
2016-2018
The Challenge: Making Invisible Magic Efficient
How?
Have you ever stopped to wonder how you can post pictures, videos, or even livestream from a crowded stadium, a bustling mall, or a busy street?
The Magic
The answer lies in specialized cellular equipment, often hidden away—the "magic" that enables seamless connectivity.
Problem
At the time of this project, Corning was marketing its Corning ONE platform but faced intense competition. The key selling points for this type of equipment are price, reliability, and speed of installation. Unfortunately, Corning ONE was falling short on the installation speed metric because its configuration software's user interface (UI) was highly inefficient.
The Scale of Complexity
Cellular installations are incredibly complex.
A Hotel Installation (e.g., 14 floors) involves approximately 200 pieces of active equipment, extensive fiber optic and copper cabling (for power), electrical and grounding networks, backup power systems, fire suppression, and security access systems.
A Hotel Installation (e.g., 14 floors) involves approximately 200 pieces of active equipment, extensive fiber optic and copper cabling (for power), electrical and grounding networks, backup power systems, fire suppression, and security access systems.
Stadium
A Stadium Installation is exponentially more complex, often requiring over 6,000 pieces of equipment and associated infrastructure.
Extreme organization
These installations demand extreme organization. Technicians must ensure every piece of equipment is perfectly placed, tagged, and documented, down to every single cable.
The Redesign Journey
This was my inaugural project at iBwave, a Corning subsidiary. My mission was to enhance the user experience of the configuration software. After several weeks of immersion—learning about wireless cellular networks, refreshing my electromagnetism physics knowledge, and studying the Corning ONE architecture and configuration software—I developed my initial proposal.
Job Shadowing
To truly understand the problem, I requested to be included in every installation or update opportunity. This allowed me to travel across the United States (New Jersey, Boston, College Station, TX, and Phoenix, AZ), where I shadowed highly specialized technicians. I observed them installing, configuring, testing, and troubleshooting equipment.
Critical Observation
A critical observation highlighted the software's inefficiency.
In large installations, an additional engineer was sometimes required solely to update the parameters of thousands of pieces of equipment, one by one. This repetitive cycle was a significant bottleneck.
In large installations, an additional engineer was sometimes required solely to update the parameters of thousands of pieces of equipment, one by one. This repetitive cycle was a significant bottleneck.
The Technician's Pain Points
The most insightful part of my work was conducting the user journey mapping by observing the technicians' struggles firsthand. I witnessed them often resorting to exporting the entire system status into Excel for troubleshooting and core tasks.
The main jobs technicians were using Excel to solve were:
1. Determining the current network architecture (i.e., how major equipment groups are connected).
2. Identifying the main problem areas within the installation.
3. Modifying the configuration for multiple pieces of equipment simultaneously.
(Note: Only half of the user journey insights are included here.)
The main jobs technicians were using Excel to solve were:
1. Determining the current network architecture (i.e., how major equipment groups are connected).
2. Identifying the main problem areas within the installation.
3. Modifying the configuration for multiple pieces of equipment simultaneously.
(Note: Only half of the user journey insights are included here.)
Solution
The solution was driven by the need to efficiently handle large-scale data and network complexity, in an extremely underpowered web server with limited memory.
NETWORK OVERVIEW
A screen allowing the technician to instantly grasp the network architecture and view any problems at a glance.
NETWORK OVERVIEW
A screen allowing the technician to instantly grasp the network architecture and view any problems at a glance.
Bulk Configuration
A feature enabling the user to modify any parameter for multiple pieces of equipment in a single action.
Alarms Only View
A one-click filter to isolate all equipment currently reporting an alarm state.
Extreme Impact
The redesign delivered a massive improvement, particularly for extreme cases like stadium installations with thousands of devices. We successfully reduced the elapsed time for bulk updates from 10 hours to an astounding 5 minutes! This change significantly boosted installation speed and dramatically improved the daily work life of technicians.
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