Product Design Lead
Internal Web Application
Magna Steyr
Deliverables \ Tasks
Research
Wireframes
Interactions
Coaching & Feedback (UI/UX)
Running Design Sprints & Workshops
Magna is a company dedicated to delivering new mobility solutions. A technology company and one of the world's largest suppliers to the automotive industry. Their agility and expertise make them the only partner for autonomy and building vehicles for brands like Aston Martin, BMW, Ford, and many more.
I got the opportunity to lead the user experience team and the user researchOPS for a Risk Management Tool used by the whole company. It was a hell of a ride to work with developers, risk managers, and UX/UI designers. To get them all on one page and create a user-friendly, easy-to-use, and responsive web application was a challenge that I truly enjoyed.
Lead the design for an enterprise like Magna was a unification effort. I drove three design sprints and worked site by site with a small team of young designers to create interactions, wireframes, low-fidelity mockups, and high-fidelity prototypes. Moreover, we interviewed engineers and got valuable information from risk managers who will use this tool.
Material Design in B2B
Material Design works well for customers (B2C), but how does it work for an enterprise like this? In a world where there is much more information, high-density, and complex data (tables, visualizations), you keep the soul of material design and unify simplicity, material motions, and interactions with enterprise-ready clarity and functionality.
Goals
- Improve the process and make it more clear
- Empower users to correct errors in assessments
- Help users to understand the complex data without overwhelming them
- Scale efficiency and productivity
- Responsive and comfortable to use on a mobile device (Tablet, Smartphone)
Design with the companies' future goals in mind creates consistency, but the preparation helps ease the design and implementation challenges of Magna's larger future goals. Material design was a helpful tool to make functional improvements – not just visual ones.
Discussing priorities and being transparent about design decisions was the key to build trust and respect between the design team and the engineering team. It helped to speed up the process of creating this great product.
Final Reflection
Simon Sinek always says: "Leadership is an education, and be a student!" and he is more than right. It was such a thrill to get insights into a company like Magna. I learned so much from the people and the culture in this organization.
To emphasize with engineers, risk managers, and UX/UI Designer with less experience was a challenge that I loved, and at the end of the day, you have to care about the people you work with and not only about the product.