Company: Cisco

Project Duration: 3 months

My Role: UX Design and UX Research

The Team:
1 UX Designer & Researcher (me)
1 iOS Developer
1 Front End Developer
1 Software Architect
1 Electrical Engineer

What is Virtual Assistant?

The Virtual Assistant solution was a proof of concept project. This solution enabled one employee to virtually monitor and assist guests at three separate locations. The concept was built using native iOS applications that were powered by Webex Teams™ along with a control console for managing the audio controls.

Front-desk employee monitoring three locations at a trade show with the Virtual Assistant solution.

Front-desk employee monitoring three locations at a trade show with the Virtual Assistant solution.

Guests interact with a front-desk employee using a kiosk endpoint.

Guests interact with a front-desk employee using a kiosk endpoint.

Purpose

The motivation behind Virtual Assistant was to create a tool that enabled front-desk employees to extend their presence - particularly across multiple low-traffic locations. This would decrease the operational cost for businesses in a range of industries - from healthcare to hospitality.

My Role

I joined after an initial version of the concept had been created and began by evaluating the usability and proposing changes before demonstrating the technology to customers. After initial usability test, it became apparent that users’ arms grew fatigued after 30-40 minutes at the device. This was a problem because front-desk employees would be at these stations for hours as they worked. To improve usability, I designed and iteratively prototyped a control console and worked with a fabrication studio to produce a fully functional prototype.

Outcome

The final deliverable was a functional prototype of the control console. The prototype was a success: front-desk employees were able to use the Virtual Concierge solution for entire shifts without strain. Additionally, the tactile buttons enabled employees to use the device without looking down, further improving the ergonomics of the Virtual Assistant Solution.

Prototype control console for the front-desk employee to navigate between screens.

Prototype control console for the front-desk employee to navigate between screens.

Process Work

Initial Concept Drawings

To begin, I held an ideation session with the team where I captured a number of ideas in concepts through sketching. The idea around a control console for the Virtual Assistant station emerged from this session.

From the initial concept, I refined the idea through determining exactly what featured needed to be included on the console and sketching a variety of possible layouts. The sketch below was used for the guiding the development of functional prototype.

IMG_2037.png

Usability Testing

Before fabricating a functional prototype, I validated the layout and controls by designing a small usability study with 7 participants testing 8 tasks.

I created a low-fidelity testable prototype using Invision running on an iPad mini. The protoype contained all possible states of the control console and was interactive.

I created a low-fidelity testable prototype using Invision running on an iPad mini. The protoype contained all possible states of the control console and was interactive.

The results of the usability study.

The results of the usability study.

Functional Prototype

Following the validation of the usability testing, the team worked with a fabrication lab to create a functional prototype.

VC Diagram.png

What I learned

While this project did not find a path to productization, it provided a learning experience for me and the team. I learned about industrial design, the differences between designing for digital interfaces and physical devices, and the intricacies of performing usability studies on hardware.