HP
Back in 2016, HP was getting ready to launch a state-of-the-art industrial 3D printer. In addition to the actual printer, HP wanted to devise a complimentary print management tool that would streamline the entire 3D printing process to simplify existing work streams and make 3D printing viable for a wider market. We were tasked with conceptualizing a process that made 3D printing easier for everyone involved.
Role
Product Designer
Results
Conceptualized an end-to-end 3D printing product experience including the printer interface and print management platform.
Contribution
Market Research
Information Architecture
User Flows / Testing
Understanding the Market
My work began by getting a better idea of the 3D printing landscape. The first stage of the project involved thorough market research in order to get a better grasp of the entire industry. I began by outlining the main steps of the industrial 3D printing process and identifying the people that would be involved in the process.
Understanding Our Users
It all starts by understanding the needs and wants of the users. In order to create a product that addresses the needs of the users and improve things that they value, we spent a large portion of our research understanding the motivations and thought processes of our users. From our research, we identified 2 main user personas:
Creator - this is the person who is interested in getting something 3D printed. This includes people like designers, hobbyists, engineers, etc.
Operators - these are the people who actually man the 3D printers and have an expertise in operating these machines. These are people who work in 3D print shops.
Taking everything we learned, we started to map out all the steps of the 3D printing process that we felt we were in the unique position to improve.
After identifying key points of improvement that we noticed during our research, we then created an ideal user flow for each persona that would take into account the needs and desires of our user personas.
Testing and Synthesis
We then took what we refined and tested it with real people. In order to understand if our hypothesis and thinking aligned with the people who we designed this product for, we had an independent user testing firm present the designated user flows for each persona. We found participants that worked in the 3D printing industry and gleaned several valuable insights.
After taking what we learned, we finalized a user flow that took the information that we learned during testing to creating a final deliverable for how the future product and platform could look like.
A Visual Story
Once we had an ideal flow set, we then added a level of refinement to create visual wireframes that illustrated the story that we wanted to tell.
