Asset Explorer and Opal Ecosystem
Asset Explorer is a web app that allows I.T. users to look into devices' status as well as gather data asset data. It works in the same fashion as a search engine, however it is linked to our asset databases only. I was brought into this project to improve the user interface. The UI was all over the place due to multiple teams working on it across its lifetime. The goal was to make it appealing and easy to use.
When we started working on this project we were told that we should make it stand out from any other web apps that the company had. We wanted to explore color schemes that were not the regular GE colors. This is why we went with a purple gradient and more modern/futuristic UI. We wanted this web app to be sexy and extremely easy to use. We worked with our users to understand how the filters should work, what kinds of asset data they were interested in seeing and how to implement some device specific features for maintenance (for example “silencing”).
During the research, we discovered that Asset Explorer had sister web apps like Change Portal and Event Management. These apps have similar features yet they serve individual purposes. Researched showed us that users were not aware of all the tools available to them. This is when we came up with the idea of creating a hub or ecosystem where all of them would be linked together. It would allow our users to be able to easily access the tool they needed and potentially leverage the other tools' individual capabilities.
Our “ecosystem” design was based on the colorful background we used on Asset Explorer. We made sure that each application had a distinct color and icon so the user would be able to distinguish them apart. We allowed the users to be able to navigate between applications seamlessly without having to return to the home page.
Overall, the new design and ecosystem was well received. This project is being held in the backlog as there are other needs that the development team needs to work on. There might be another round of iterations, but we are going on a good direction. I am looking forward to keep updating this application.
