Implementing a Smart Network with Internet of Things

Assisting Scottish Water to transforming their network maintenance procedures, by implementing Internet of Things (IoT) technology to increase proactive maintenance measures on their network.

Waste water treatment plant image

Overview

I used a human-centred design approach, discovering the challenges, designing solutions to meet the end users’ challenges and testing those designs. For the workshops and facilitation, I ran these remotely through MIRO. To develop the prototypes, I used Axure and PowerApps. 

Goal

The aim of the project was to assist the client in transforming their network maintenance procedures, by implementing IoT technology to increase proactive maintenance measures on their network.

Outcomes

  • Success was measured by the impact the platform would have on the front response team and if it reduced the  amount of admin time they would have to complete.  

    • The feedback we received from the front response explained that by reducing amount of systems they had to  access, the platform would improve data quality for the analysts and operational staff to receive information they  required, first time around. In addition it would provide front line workers more time to engage with the customer,  by saving 15 minute of admin time per job per first time respondent.

My role
Customer Experience Lead

Tools
Axure
Zoom
Teams
MIRO
PowerApps

Year
2020

Project

There were a range of users that I needed to engage with from engineers, first line respondents, analysts, customer service desk employees and  operation staff. Therefore, their needs ranged greatly from having information readily available and accessible on a  mobile device, to being able to map the information from the IoT devices onto a 3D model.  

In the first phases, to gather the user needs, I conducted interviews, workshops and attended day in  the life of sessions which I translated into user stories. From the user stories, I translated these into requirements and features of a new platform for the first response team which would condense the  amount of systems they current access from 6 to 2.

The static design was then turned into a clickable  prototype which was iteratively tested with end users. Eventually I developed the prototype into a  PowerApps which could be implemented into the business.  

To develop the prototypes and create the personas, I worked within multi-disciplinary team of business analysts, IoT experts, designers and business case/  strategy consultants.  

Key learning and takeaways

  • I would have reached out to the internal digital teams to obtain their style guides for the PowerApps programme at the start of the  project and gone through the process of digital approvals sooner.

  • Communicate early on the goals of the research to all members of the organisation so they can buy into the project. This will ease the facilitation of the workshops and interviews.