3M Industrial Multi-touchpoint Experience
3M embraces ecosystem thinking as a means for both understanding their customers, as well as thinking about how to design connected solutions that meet the needs of their end users.
This holistic approach and integrated thinking allows them to unite quality with purpose to create design solutions that are beautiful, functional, and help improve people's lives everywhere.
Challenge
3M gave my design team the opportunity to design a connected ecosystem in their Industrial Business unit by leveraging the existing research of the problem space, the users and influencers in the space, and key pain points for their current experience.
Tools & Methods:
Design Strategy
Journey Mapping
Rapid Prototyping
Storyboards & Scenarios
Result
My design team presented 3M stakeholders with a new design strategy in hearing conservation, focused on empowering the worker and creating a ripple effect of positive improvement impacting all touch points.
All user experience touch points for 3M Industrial will help workers to feel empowered and equipped so that they are able to prevent hearing loss.
We will do this by focusing on convenience and personalization.
Approach
A meeting with stakeholders familiarized the design team with 3M’s approach to ecosystem thinking and design. We were presented with the ecosystem map and a user journey map for a foundation. A significant decrease in the safety manager’s emotions during steps 3 and 4 were noted and set us off to find the causes of these negative emotions and explore potential fixes.
With the strict time constraint we were working under, the design team approached initial research strategically: each member of the team did a deep dive independently in one area of focus to cover as much ground as possible.
Safety Manager and Worker Interaction
What could change?
We hypothesized that in this ecosystem, the relationship between the safety manager and the workers resulted in negative interactions, The safety manager in a role of “rule enforcer.”
By focusing on training the workers and equipping them with technology we will empower and promote worker independence, resulting in less potentially negative worker/safety manager interactions.
Educate First
Training on hearing conservation should be prioritized early in the process. By reorganizing the steps 3 and 5 we will educate workers about hearing dangers before they encounter them.
