Apple + GE Partnership
Material Optimization Suite App
Project Overview
The Material Optimization Suite (MOS) app is part of a strategic partnership with Apple focused on accelerating the design of best in class industrial applications for iOS. Additionally these apps were used to create a design system and an iOS SDK for GE developers to build iOS apps at scale.
The problem
Plant Managers, our primary persona, need better visibility into materials needed for manufacturing in their plant and a way to take action while on the plant floor.
Poor tracking system in the plants leads to a lot of waste.
It is very costly if materials are not ordered on time
Source system contains data from every GE plant
Users have to sort through a lot of irrelevant info to find the things the need
Desktop experience only
Users can’t perform any actions in the current application
Our Solution
We collaborated closely with a group of users to design a streamlined mobile application. The app delivers relevant to users and enables plant managers to action on items wherever they are.
Mobile application allowed users to work far more efficiently
Provided the features users needed
Only shows them relevant data
Enables them to perform actions
Enables users to contact team members trough app.
Additionally they can create or adjust orders, change status, and snooze POs for reminders later
Search for POs by scanning barcodes of parts on the plant floor
My Role
As the lead UX designer for GE's Digital Innovation team on this project, I worked closely with a lean team of UX designers to perform user interviews to understand a day in the life of a Plant Managers.
We performed several rounds of user interviews and contextual inquires to really understand our user’s needs.
We spent a week at Apple's Enterprise Design Lab with our users, the GE UX team, and Apple's design & technology experts.
It was extremely effective in accelerating the process of building this application. It also strengthened our relationship with our users & product teams.
In three days, we had several fully fleshed-out screens and a functioning Xcode prototype.
Best of all, our users felt personally invested in the product and were impressed seeing the UX design process in action.
I also created a light theme for the app to accommodate our user's preferences & improve usability in different physical environments which it will be used.
