UX design for a digital reservoir management solution

Client
Hydraulic fracturing company, 50,000+ employees
Industry
Fossil fuels

Project

Reservoir Management Studio is a cloud solution for reservoir data analysis, dynamic modeling, and production operations. The solution serves geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, petroleum engineers, production engineers, facility engineers, asset managers, and other reservoir engineers.

The goal of the project was to improve the client’s data visualization and create the UX logic to help users carry out efficient data analysis and reservoir management.

Project results

PH2 created a high-performing UX that helped the client bring together separate solutions into a single management studio. The UX made data analysis easier and improved visualization and platform usability, meaning the client is able to make better operational decisions faster.

Three UX aspects for data analysis and reporting, tool setup, and visualization

Real-time graphic generation based on data updates

A consistent and attractive UI that addresses the needs of more than ten user types

Process

The design process

Created complex simulations and models
Described a wide range of reservoir types
Researched well histories and files in order to understand the client’s previous well workR
Analyzed field and well meter data in both current and historical conditions, to learn how data was informing operational decisions
Communicated the results of work in user-friendly reports

Throughout the project, the team regularly communicated with geophysicists, geologists, and petrophysicists to ensure that static and dynamic reservoir models were accurate and up-to-date.

The design process

Research

10 Stakeholders interview

We conducted requirements interview with:

Solution owners
Product owners
Business consults
Development spesialists

In these workshops, we understood the overall business, current pain points, new project objectives, user perspectives, and the desired RMS experience.

7 Users interview

As follow-ups to the workshops, we met with internal and external users to get a better understanding of the desired outcomes, clarifications on some of the processes, tools, and also of the key sections of the product, content, and features, gains, and pains that would support the overall vision.

2 Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis makes it easier to plan our products and marketing. The analysis helps us identify:

Assess where the product and design stand in the market
Define gaps in the market
Know the strengths and weaknesses of the competition
Identify the advantages and disadvantages of our products
Have evidence to back up our design changes
Helps us solve usability issues

High-level flow mapping

Mapping user journey

Drawing on UX team research, we have listed all the touchpoints customers and prospects use when interacting with our products. Working together through the CJM, we’ve focused on what are major pain points at each step of the journey, how we could identify success, and what are our opportunities.

Big picture

Design studio

Based on research on common tools for 3D modeling (3D Max, Blender 3D, Maya Autodesk), we established that there would be top navigation, and left navigation.

Design ideas

Split Screen

In order to allow users to review or edit data at the same time, they need to see how the changes affect the 3D model at the same time. For that reason was created Split Screen was for all additional windows with information. It’s scrollable and resistible.

Auto Report & Chat

Users can easily add all information from the screen to the report with the possibility to add comments. It makes the usual reports to the management easy and rapid with minimal effort from the engineer’s side.

Style guide

As a team, we designed various symbols that were reused throughout the product, such as typography, colors, buttons, etc. We converted these symbols into components and combined various components into the cards seen around the prototype.

Cards

These were the most fun to make. It was interesting to see how many possibilities there are in card design. Through user testing, we found that placing charts higher on the visual hierarchy helps users’ to analyze data.

Challenges

The client’s existing reservoir management process was split across several solutions and used tables and charts with poor visualization. Furthermore, changes were not tracked in real time.

P2H’s task was to deliver an MVP for a streamlined and integrated UX. The UX needed to cover three task areas: data analysis, tool use, and data visualization.