Caterpillar Fleet Management

Caterpillar Design Challenge

The Caterpillar fleet management software development was a user interface and user experience project as part of Caterpillar's World Usability Day contest. The login was conceptualized and prototyped using Figma and utilized Caterpillar’s brand standards and design library. This project was a team effort, which was presented to the Caterpillar headquarters team and my team won first place in the contest. My role as one of the designers was to make and design out most of the management page while also keeping in contact with the client to make sure his needs are met by our team. I held meetings with our client to discuss and collaborate both our team's vision and the clients making sure both were met.

Problem Statement  

​Caterpillar assigned this project because they found information that their customers in the construction industry did not have software to track Caterpillar equipment assets. Caterpillar gave this project to us because they found information that their clients in the construction industry

• Used Excel sheets and equipment would get double booked for projects
• The desired outcome was to make an Excel-type program to track assets across multiple construction projects
• The project needs to control asset placement and show maintenance, scheduling and reassigning assets

Our initial design concept included a calendar view and a spreadsheet-style look since most software operators were used to tracking equipment with Excel. We also took inspiration from Slack and Discord to keep track of the projects. One of the main concerns was being able to filter through the projects to find equipment easily. We implemented Slacks channel features to sort projects. We also used Discord's navigation to allow for several tabs to find certain assets within a specific construction project.

Process

Here are the basic tasks we will want users to complete during usability testing:​

1. You made a new project and would request the different types of assets we needed.
2. You want to see what assets are ready for assignments and assign assets to that new project.
3. You view the schedule to see what assets in your fleet are assigned to projects and when maintenance is coming due for those assets.
4. You would like to edit the assignment of an asset to a project.

User Testing Results​

Three users tested the project, and all feedback was recorded. Here is the list of changes made.

• Add breadcrumbs to our navigation to prevent user confusion.
• Make every action available from the project dashboard (reassignment, etc.)
• Instead of using bulk actions, put in a permanent button to allow the user to add an individual asset.
• Include one big action button to assign the assets at the top so that one does not need to scroll down
• Fix heading titles to be more descriptive and help with navigation/consistency
• Edit the usage of the project dashboard
• Remove the timeline coloring.
• Have a dedicated color to see what asset needs maintenance
• Adjust the naming of the Calendar legend

After user testing, we were given an hour and thirty minutes to fix the issues we received. We focused mainly on the dashboard. Easing navigation and making sure the user always knew where they were within the application using breadcrumbs and proper heading titles. We also made every task viable within the dashboard screen

Results

After we made these initial changes, our team was chosen as the winner to present to the Caterpillar Headquarters as part of their World Usability Day. After we had found out our design won the competition, we reworked more screens according to user feedback.

• Rework the Calendar View screen to show an organized table for maintenance while keeping a calendar pop-up for filtering by date range
• Adjust the flow during the change from asset assignment to the project dashboard
• Add prototype functionality with the breadcrumbs
• Remove the expandable/shrink option for the tab bar
• Increase the readability on the reassignment to the project screen (left-alignment of text)

We decided to rework the calendar view because a lot of the time the clients' testing would get lost and would get confused about where to go. Overall, we had a great experience working with Caterpillar getting the chance to learn and get real feedback in a professional environment