A user centered approach to developing an interactive dashboard that supports task planning

Abstract: The R&D of Scania and specifically the EPIC group initiated a research, to upgrade, the software update process of an ECU (electronic unit). This procedure, requires many steps, involves many people and departments and demands constant data monitoring. The current solution provided by the company, two excel spreadsheets, is not very efficient for the employees, it is failing to meet the users’ requirements and expectations, and originates many concerns. For that reason the EPIC department wanted to explore new alternatives in order to provide an easier, user friendly solution, which supports and provides more accurate collaboration within teams. In the world of automotive industry, this action is very common since many companies, such as Volvo, have invested many efforts in research in order to utilize those long complex processes. These studies were analysed and considered fundamental for their methods, their research work and the general approach they used in each case. This research aimed to approach the problem in a user-centered way, by deploying a participatory design methodology, which included interviews, workshops, usability tests and questionnaires. The objectives were firstly, to understand the main issues of the current solution, the main requirements and needs from the user's perspective and finally to suggest a new way to improve the interaction. The main focus was aligned with the most prominent problem, which was the lack of task planning for both short and long term periods. The research led to suggestions of a new information architecture and the introduction of a dashboard with an interactive timeline. The introduction of streamlines (dates) , interactions (panning, zooming) and coloured boxes (tasks), aimed to support users and meet their expectations regarding the task planning. The outcome revealed that the current solution was sufficient for identifying and completing simple tasks, however the user’s needs were overcoming the potentials of a static table. The interactive dashboard, as a new solution, provided better insights, larger set of functions, new information architecture and improved user experience. Despite the fact that some participants raised concerns regarding the interactions and the learning curve, the overall experience was described more friendly than the current. The discoveries of the research regarding the two visualizations can be evaluated only on the basis of task planning as a feature, and not in general.