Canvs

Vector pro

FEATURE CONCEPTUALIZATION

INTERFACE DESIGN

ENGG ADVISORY

Consulting giant from India, more background on vector, and their industry. Vector had a product of their own that they were using to plan, manage and monitor multi year manufacturing projects along with their clients. State the problem with it and why we were called in. Projects based on CCPM with focus on the critical chain.

The ask was to conceptualize and design interfaces for a completely new paradigm for the experience of planning projects, managing them, and simultaneously allowing clients to view and monitor their projects better.

Visualizing a multi year project

Infinite canvas with a DAG and an expandable timeline.

The concept of a network of tasks representing a full project with an expandable timeline to support it. The network is made of tasks that branch out in time. At any point the critical chain stays highlighted.

The purpose of the network view was to give a universal graphical view of any project to any client at any
point in time

All tasks were connected to their successors and predecessors forming dependency chains and resultingly the critical chain that stayed highlighted while viewing the network

Using the graph view

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe.

Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.

Further, we made information accessible while interacting with

the graph in different modes

Further, we made information accessible while interacting with the graph in different modes

On hover details

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information

On click full task views

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information

Traversal and navigation

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information

Action wheel and Gizmos

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information

To monitor the overall health of the project we designed a heads up display that projected multiple critical highlights of the project in one interactive display unit

Headline

Task durations could range between a few days to a few quarters.
This posed a major challenge in our zoom based interactivity, as longer tasks would make it extremely difficult to move through the network if you wanter shorter tasks to be visible on a common timescale.

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.

We solved this by simply switching to a Normalized Log Scale, constrained by min max values for the task length on the network.

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.

What we did was make the length of a task on the network a function of the log of its duration instead of simply linearly correlation to it. This automatically stunted the lengths of ultra long tasks while not punishing the shorter ones in comparision.

Beyond the graph: Planning projects

Projects spanned over multiple years and a critical part of setting them up was the planning phase.

Project planning itself was a multi week exercise that involved building an excel sheet in a specific template which then was visualized as a network of identically sized tasks in Vector’s existing software.

This meant any correction to the spreadsheet, could only be visualized by reuploading, and rebuilding the network from scratch.

Consultants found it extremely difficult to visualize deltas in the network projections based on changes they made, and hence had an inherent handicap while planning projects despite having a visual view of it.

Naturally, to solve this Vector wanted the spreadsheet exercise to be moved over to the product so they could quickly refresh the network. This was however not going to solve the problem of observing projection deltas as the inputs changed.

Split view project

To solve the problem vector faced, we modelled a split, build + graph (inspect) view for the product. This would allow consultants to build the whole network on one half of the screen while they saw the network build on the other half.

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.

Consequentially, any changes they made to the task sheet, automatically reflected on the network in terms of changes in critical chain links, projections, improvements and potential failures

Multi year projects spanning hundreds of people and dozens of teams become increasingly complex to observe. Hence a tactical abstraction of information was a key motivator behind the interface. Depending on the zoom you had on the network, you’d see tasks at different level of detail.