Production-Line
Issue Localisation & Handover
Global Automotive OEM / B2B
On a moving line, every second compounds.
When front-line staff spot a problem on a vehicle, they must mark it fast and hand it over so the next responsible can act with zero ambiguity, without stopping the line or breaking their rhythm.
The organisation needed a new, operator-centred way to capture where/what quickly and ensure the next technician could find/understand/act immediately.
Design mandate : invent a mark-and-handover experience that fits the cadence of the line, respects technician cognition, and can be adopted without operational disruption.
Challenges
Long-standing habits and non-standard annotations “worked” locally but broke down across shifts and teams.
Technicians carry mental models of the vehicle that diverge from formal schematics. Legacy practices and non-standardised handovers meant that a note meaningful to one person could be opaque to the next.
The result: avoidable delay, misinterpretation, and friction between shifts.
Design Principles
Mental-Model Alignment
Reflect how frontline staff actually reason about the vehicle and its sub-systems, not how databases are structured.
Handover clarity
the “reading” side is as important as marking, standardised summaries that travel cleanly across roles.
Invisible adoption
no big-bang replacement;
co-existence and gradual migration to avoid disruption.
Speed under pressure
design for < 1 minute end-to-end, minimising steps and interpretation
Empathic Discovery
Go beyond what employees say they want. Surface latent needs through contextual inquiry, repeated testing, and psychological mapping.
Device fluidity
handheld on the floor, desktop at desks. Same language, same decisions.
Approach
01
Context discovery & cognitive mapping
Partnered with UX researchers to interview/research/shadow technicians, eliciting how they mentally segment the vehicle during real work. We translated those cognitive anchors into the core navigation and labelling model.
02
Rapid mark flow
Prototyped a spatially-aware vehicle representation that lets operators:
(1) jump straight to the relevant area, (2) apply a concise, standardised mark with minimal input, and (3) auto-capture essential context (location, time, station, status).
Interaction paths were trimmed to hit the sub-minute threshold under realistic conditions.
03
Reading & actionability
Designed a complementary “reading” mode so the next responsible can immediately locate the area, grasp the issue, and know the next step (confirm, escalate, resolve), removing guesswork and discussion from handovers.
04
Adoption strategy
Defined a side-by-side rollout plan: bridge to existing tools first, migrate slices of the workflow incrementally, and protect daily throughput.
05
Validation at pace
Ran short test loops on the floor; time-and-motion measurements and qualitative probes guided successive cuts. Where feedback was fragmented or contradictory, we read the underlying intent and adjusted the model, not just the UI.
Concept Snapshot
Operator-centred structure that reflects how technicians actually reason about the vehicle
Sub-minute mark flow with standardised, portable summaries
Clear handover views optimised for findability and immediate action
Outcomes
Adoption signals
Technicians described the concept as “in our language,” with strong pull to pilot beyond the initial cell.
Operational promise
Clearer handovers reduced interpretation time.
Organisational momentum
The concept was highlighted internally by digital leadership as a flagship success in manufacturing UX transformation, and praised as a model for future initiatives.
Scalable foundation
Delivered the mental-model framework, interface patterns, and a pragmatic migration plan for subsequent teams.
Client identity and proprietary details anonymised
in compliance with NDA.
