Shortly after winning the Cummins account, our team was tasked with a challenge meant to demonstrate our thinking and ability to the Digital Experience group within the organization. Our assignment? Offer a recommendation for unifying and optimizing the experience of three disjointed products within the Cummins portfolio, finding opportunities to communicate the value of FiberRed, a new digital insights platform being launched by the group along the way.
Role: User Experience, Art Direction
Auditing each product, we found information scattered across three unique navigation systems and architectures. The net result was a cluttered and unintuitive experience that when combined with the dated aesthetic of each app, eroded trust and failed to represent the promise of the Cummins brand.
Moving into the design phase, we began by centering on the value prop for this suite of apps—giving subscribers the ability to manage a more efficient fleet and avoid costly downtime through remote monitoring and equipment access, all via insights powered by the FiberRed platform.
From there, three opportunities to add value surfaced:
1. Create a launchpad where customers could see subscribed-to apps, along with timely and relevant information about their fleet
2. Refactor the myriad information architectures into a single page app structure, increasing speed of the application, reducing clicks and giving customers the ability to quickly identify distressed equipment and take quick action
3. Propose a notification system providing real time alerts and updates from anywhere within the app experience
Starting with the system launchpad, we crafted two approaches.
The first gave customers a summary view of all FiberRed enabled products within their fleet, and their status through a system-level dashboard allowing for quick identification of problem equipment with paths to action.
The second used an app store model where subscribed-to apps are launched and personalized content is merchandised and browsed, highlighting the depth of the FiberRed offering across industries.
Mapping existing content into our single page app structure quickly began to streamline the experience, creating consistency across the apps and improving on critical functionality by surfacing and intelligently grouping data for a given piece of equipment, giving customers the full picture of equipment health from within a single view.
This framework also allowed for quick toggling across product verticals where needed, bringing much needed flexibility to the system.
An immersive, full screen design for the proposed notification system allowed customers to quickly assess activity across their fleet, prioritize accordingly, then take action with as few clicks as possible.
Knowing that wireframes alone weren’t going to be enough to fully convey our vision, we began exploring product look and feel options that could bring the experience to life and communicate the hi-tech capability of the FiberRed platform, all while neatly dovetailing with a recently-approved brand direction.
Multiple paths were explored, but the concept that ultimately moved forward with was “Luminescence”, a direction inspired by bioluminescent creatures in nature and their ability to generate points of light in response to changes within their internal system.
The resulting product aesthetic combined everything a clean modern package, staying true to the strength and integrity of the Cummins’ 100+ year legacy while also showing where it could go for the next 100.
Our client stakeholders were incredibly pleased with the recommendation, complimenting our vision and thoroughness. Ultimately, our efforts went on to set the table for the agency being awarded a large influx of additional product work.