SolidWorks 3DContentCentral (3DCC) Redesign

The SolidWorks 3DContent Central (3DCC) website -- a model exchange service that allows vendors to post models of their inventory for mechanical/industrial designers to download and use in their designs -- had been largely untouched for about 5 years and it was starting to really show. The original site's visuals were dated, and the features were scattered and unfocused after organic adjustments over the years.  A renewed interest in updating the site, along with a new business model was proposed in the spring of 2014, and finally in June of 2015, a new redesigned 3DCC was launched!

Yours truly lead the UX of the redesign. Although I was no longer with the company when the redesigned site finally launched, the UX design was largely completed by the time I left and it's great to see how far the product team was able to take it by the launch.

Here's a quick look at the Before

Original 3DCC Home Page
Hard to focus on what was important and where to start

Original 3DCC Find Content Page
A lot of entry points to finding content

There was a lot of work to be done, so the work was phased into 3 sections. The initial phase was to revamp the home page and general styling, revise the backend to support the new business model offering, and showcase why users and vendors should be part of the 3DCC community.

After I completed the wireframes of the main areas we could affect in the first phase, I worked with a visual designer to get the branding and color palette into place to support our new initiative.

Here's a look at the After

New 3DCC Home Page
Highlighting "Search" as the main way for designers find parts to use in their design
Sponsorship is clean and clear
Updated the overall look and feel to include the proper branding logos and color palette

As the page scrolls, the header and footer are fixed with Search persistently accessible

New 3DCC Find Content Page
Only the header and footer were adjusted in this phase to accommodate the timeline

New 3DCC Subscription Benefits Page
The navigation / site information architecture was completely reworked into the new header navigation

New 3DCC Business Model Page
Simple at a glance view of the different offerings

New 3DCC Publisher's Catalog Dashboard
High level view of your content publishing status by catalogs (publishers can have more than one)
The content manager (grid of content controls in bottom left) was not redesigned in this phase

New 3DCC Usage Report
The new feature and main selling point of the new business mode
Publishers will get a detailed view of who has downloaded their models (leads)
The report is searchable and sortable, allowing publishers to cross sell if the lead has downloaded other models
The amount of detail publishers see will depend on their subscription level

Overall the relaunch is fairly successful. We brought the website up to modern standards and provided a wealth of new functionality that publishers would (hopefully) find valuable and be willing to spend more money on a higher subscription level than before. 

What's New in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2015 - Copy Tree

Yours truly revamped the UI for an existing feature of SolidWorks Enterprise PDM - Copy Tree. In SolidWorks ePDM 2015, the UI was revamped, cleaned up, and given a brand new filter capability that allows users to locate the file they want in the fastest time possible. 

A more in depth post will appear at some point, for now, a repost of the original blog on SolidWorks by Mike Fearon follows below. 

http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2014/09/solidworks-2015-manager-showcase-whats-new-in-epdm.html

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The SOLIDWORKS annual release starts with feedback provided by you, our community, and finds its way to the people responsible for including your request in our annual release. For SOLIDWORKS 2015, we wanted to introduce you to some of the people responsible for the new features and let them describe their favorite tools included in the 2015 release. Today’s SOLIDWORKS Expert is Kurt Lundstedt, Product Manager, EPDM

Kurt on what’s new: Copy Tree has been available in SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM (EPDM) for many years, but in 2015 the user interface has been completely redesigned making it much easier to create new product structures.  As we all know, many companies reuse existing designs to make new ones.  These new designs often share many of the same sub-assemblies and components with the prior version as well as incorporating new designs.  That’s where Copy Tree comes in handy and in 2015 there are many new features that make it much easier to find and select the files to be reused or copied.  Some of the new features include:

• Selection filters based on file type and/or any text string in the file name or file property can make a large product structure easy to work with.
• Thumbnail previews for SOLIDWORKS files give the user an instant visual clue of the file they are looking at.
• Excluded folders so users don’t mistakenly make copies of standard library components
• Easy folder and file editing dialogs including searching for destination folders

The driving force behind this feature was customers telling us, both via direct interviews and submitted enhancement requests, that the interface was cumbersome to work with when working with large assembly structures. Another thing we discovered is that it was difficult for users to know what file they were looking at because most companies name their part and assembly files with a part number. Adding thumbnail previews provides users with quick visual feedback so they can make more accurate decisions.

Replacing the Wait Staff with an iPad

By chance I had a layover in MSP (Minnesota / St. Paul) and my gate was right next to a new concept restaurant with iPads at every single table, apparently the work of OTG Management (I have no relation to them - just happened by).

My initial thought was it's kind of cold. This restaurant is basically replacing the wait staff with iPads. We, as a society in this modern digital age, could use more human contact, not less. We're so attached to our devices, it's almost as if we are electronic devices ourselves.

I was going to sit and watch while I wait for my flight, but then the designer in me thought it might be better to go and check it out, find out how they've set it up and see what the interface is like. So I sat down looking at one of the beautiful food shots on rotation and got started with my electronic wait staff looking for the cheapest thing I can buy to justify sitting at a space and taking pictures as I go.

They rewired the iPad so you can't get to the standard controls. The Home button retrieves their special customized home screen and dock.

I tapped on "Your Flight" and it kindly asked me for info about my current flight in order to track its status for me. Gave me some info on the destination weather, etc as well. It wasn't "sticky" though, and as soon as I finished my order and was idle long enough for the slide show to kick in, it lost the flight info. It would have been nice for it to remember, or somehow have the user indicate when he/she is leaving the table (which would also help the wait staff know when to clear the table), before clearing the flight info. Since it cleared it for me, I don't know if it would have given me some kind of alarm when my boarding time was near. That would be a nice feature.

Then I proceeded to go browse the menu. Having great food photography is key in this case, since these photos are ultra high def on the iPad, and never looked this sharp in an actual printed menu.

The menu certainly looked appetizing, but the prices in this case were kind of high for my taste.

After you browse into a category the menu pop over gives you quick access to other categories, but strangely stays open after you make your selection. Maybe it's done on purpose to reduce the sticker shock since you can't see the prices when the menu is open.

After awhile I finally settled on some over-priced herbal tea since it's evening and it was more affordable than dessert. The system smartly does some cross selling as I proceed to check out.

You have to pay for your order before it gets submitted, which I understand. But gratuity is included in the payment, but I haven't interacted with any wait staff. How can I determine the level of service and how much tip to give? It's defaulted to 18% and there's no option to provide a custom value besides the 15, 18, and 20 that it gives you.

Then it steps you through paying using the card swipe stationed at each table. No cash accepted.

When the transaction is complete, it asks if you would like to receive an email of the receipt. No printed receipt seems to be available at the table. I was reluctant to provide my email since I don't know if it'll mean getting spam. They should put some kind of notice on the screen about that to reassure users, especially since you cannot opt out of getting the receipt via email. What if you don't have email?

A few minutes after all of this, my tea arrived. This was the first time I interacted with a wait staff (they have been walking around asking patrons if they needed any help in the mean time).

I was left wondering if it was worth 18% for the wait staff to bring me the tea and tell me to let it steep a few more minutes before enjoying it. Seems like a premium. The restaurants don't need as many people to work the tables, though yes, they had the up front cost of buying all those iPads. But over time it more than pays for all the staff they don't need to hire and schedule/coordinate work shifts.

The wait staff doesn't need to actually take anyone's orders. Instead of selling food and offering beverages they turn into iPad app explanation staff and they make at minimum 15% on each transaction. Not that I have anything against the wait staff earning more money, but this just doesn't seem quite right for some reason.

Well, it was an interesting experience if nothing else. Apparently this is popping up in major airports all over the country, including the Dunkin Donuts in BOS.

At the rate we're going, The Matrix will be here before we know it.

Bye humans. Better plug in.

Experiencing adidas miCoach: Discovering Workout Trends

The long weekend was good for catching up with friends, sleep, and…. workouts! The weather was pretty good on a few days and I went out to explore new grounds and new neighborhoods. I found that the bike path was a great place to run because it was well shaded with lots of trees and a nice breeze came through frequently too.

I got a few workouts in and am now almost a quarter of the way through my plan!

It’s exciting to see progress in terms of the plan, and it’s pretty cool too when you look at overall progress over time. I’ve been at it for about a year now, and the history graphs show I’ve been consistent in some areas and sporatic in others.

Here’s my Time breakdown per month in the last year. I was definitely a bit overzealous when I started and there was definitely some slacking around the winter and the holidays.

But taking a look at the Distance breakdown it looks a bit more even.

My Pace breakdown is pretty even as well. Good to know that after the winter hiatus I didn’t regress much.

The most interesting one of all is the Heart Rate breakdown. The system captures how much time I actually spent in each heart rate zone during my workouts, and colors the bar graph in with the zone color I was in.

This graph is revealing because it shows I haven’t been working as hard as in the beginning. I spent a lot more time in red in the early months, and I’m barely in any red in the last two. I credit that to following the plan better, which doesn’t require me to work super hard to gain results. Work smarter not harder. :)

Another way to see workout trends is in the Workout Journal, which is linked both from the Track menu and also on the bottom left of the History graphs. It shows data for every workout I’ve done in a table format.

Selecting the column headings will sort all the data by that stat. Since I’m on the lose weight plan I wanted to see workouts where I’m burning the most calories.

The sorted view shows top calorie burning workouts are all from my current plan, so I’m heading in the right direction with this plan!

Experiencing adidas miCoach: Analyzing Workout Details

There are lots of ways to analyze my workout performance after I sync the data to the web. The most basic one is the automatic system feedback that tells me my performance against what miCoach had prescribed for me.

There’s also the quick visual on my heart rate chart that shows how much my heart rate stayed within the workout colors intended.

I can also open the color zone boxes at the right of my heart rate chart to see actual time and stats spent within the color. According to this workout, I spent more than 4 minutes of the 21 min workout in green.

I can also overlay another statistic on top of my current stat view. I found it fascinating to overlay the pace data on top of the heart rate. Most of the time an increase in my pace means an increase to my heart rate. Sometimes I have to stop at street corners or pause for other reasons, but my heart rate isn’t that reactive so it might only fluctuate slightly.

And finally, there’s a checkbox on the bottom right corner of the chart called “Analysis Bounds”. When I turn that on, I can drag the boundaries around on the chart to focus in on the area of the workout I really care about. This workout had 5 minutes of warm up and 10 minutes of cool down. What I really cared about was the middle few minutes where I was going back and forth between the green and yellow zones. I dragged the bounds in to the beginning and end of that area and the summary stats at the top adjusts to reflect only the data within my boundaries. I actually hit 100% within that half a mile block!

That got me thinking whether I did just as well with some of my other workouts. I can click on the workout name and open the workout navigator and quickly jump to a previously completed workout and do this all over again. :)

Experiencing adidas miCoach: Catching Up on Missed Workouts

I’ve fallen woefully behind on my workout schedule.

In part the weather has only been so so, but mostly because I’m in the process of moving so there’s been no free time. I got as far as the fourth workout, which was completed 10 days ago. I’m supposed to complete workout #10 today. But let’s be realistic, I know I won’t get back to #5 until at least end of next week.
I could individually drag and drop the workouts to fix my schedule, but that would take a while to do for the remaining 29 workouts.

Luckily there’s an option to restore my plan schedule.

I select Restore Schedule from the drop down and it allows me to choose the date I want to restart the plan and which workout to restart it with. I’ll be conservative and aim for next weekend to get back to my workout #5.

I clicked OK and voila! the schedule has been restored and my schedule updates to show the new scheduling of workouts.

Let’s hope there’s some good weather happening in the greater Boston area here by then so I can get back on my schedule!