August to November 2022

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My classmates and I participated in Caterpillar’s UX Design Challenge. Caterpillar presented us with the problem that many of their dealers have, which was the organization of communication with their customers. The company wanted us to revamp their current platform that the dealers were using at that time.

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I was put onto a team of two people with a Team Lead that is an employee of Caterpillar that we could use as a resource for this project. My teammate and I researched what other companies were doing to solve this communication problem, and what other industries were doing too. Also, we called many CAT dealers to hear their thoughts about the platform we were meant to improve and to get information about how they are organizing incoming service requests and work orders.

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From there, my teammate and I used the design system given by Caterpillar to create a new version of the platform. Once we had our initial high-fidelity wireframe, we used usertesting.com to get dealer feedback about this wireframe. We learned how dealers want to organize incoming information and how information needs to be clear and not intuitive. After the user testing, we implemented many new changes and added features to clear up any possible confusion.

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On World Usability Day, my classmates and I went to Caterpillar’s old headquarters in downtown Peoria to test in-person our prototypes, and to present them after iterations. We started the day by performing three rounds of in-person user testing of our different prototypes. My team and I made iterations to our prototypes during those rounds, and then afterwards when we were given time to make changes and to make our presentation. AT the end of the day, my teammate and I presented our process of researching, making a wireframe, making a prototype, and iterating as we go with our final prototype to a large group of Caterpillar employees.

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