CloudPoint Print (CPP)

Web Application
Project Overview
Redesigned and overhauled Glidewell Arch Print, a desktop application that prints 3D models of patient's teeth, which are used to fabricate dental products for dentists to give to their patients.
My Contributions
Lead UX designer responsible for the end-to-end UX process, which resulted in an estimated 25% reduction in the time it takes for print technicians to process and print case parts.
The Challenge

The Print Room at Glidewell relies on GL Arch Print, an outdated desktop application to print 3D models of patient's teeth. GL Arch Print does not save any data on the models being printed, so managers and print technicians lose visibility of the models batched (grouped together) and printed.

The challenge is to design a new web application in 6 months that allows managers and print technicians to easily and effectively track the models in the print room while maintaining the capabilities to print 3D models.
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Key Problems to Solve
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‍1. Provide tracking capabilities for cases (i.e. what step the models are at in the printing process, when the models were printed, and what models are in a given batch)

2. Integrate automation to help print technicians batch case parts quicker

3. Identify and fix any usability issues that exist within GL Arch Print for the new web app
CloudPoint Print (CPP)
Lead UX Designer
January — June 2024
The Solution
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‍Overhauled GL Arch Print and designed CloudPoint Print (CPP) with the following new features: 

1. Worklists that track all cases, batches, and jobs so that there is full visibility within the print room
2. Auto-nesting functionality which automatically nest batches so print technicians only need to make minor adjustments, if needed 
3. Dashboard to display the status of all printers for tracking the progress of job
The Outcome
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In collaboration with UX researchers and the print room's manager, we benchmarked all print technicians to measure the time it takes for technicians to process and print case parts.  We found that print technicians on average took 3 minutes and 21 seconds to process and print case parts.

After releasing CP Print as a pilot on 1/5 of workstations, we found that the print technicians took an average of 2 minutes and 52 seconds to process and print case parts, leading to an estimated ~25% reduction in the time it takes to complete the overall workflow.
Insights
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‍Relied on contextual inquiries and direct observations to gather insights on Print Technicians' workflows and the pain points they experience day-to-day:

- Print Technicians spent on average 3 minutes arranging models on the base plate before being able to print them in the 3D printer 

- When Print Technicians load each model onto the base plate, they do not know which models are associated with the case ID.

- When deleting a case part, it is unclear which ones they are deleting 

- Users guess when their models have finished printing because the printing progress doesn’t inform the user when they are done printing or how long it takes to print 
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‍Explorations

This project stemmed from a company initiative to increase efficiency in the print room. We have the automation and the list of pain points that print technicians experienced. However, the product owners were uncertain with where to take this project and how big the scope would be.
As a result, I created an experience vision with the existing screens from the application to imagine how a print technician can reduce the amount of manual work they perform in their tasks, thereby increasing efficiency.

Experience Vision: Print technicians are able to view the list of case parts that need to be processed and once it is loaded in, the user can click a button to nest the part and send it to the printer.
‍‍Iterations: I created low-fidelity mockups and quickly iterated using the feedback I collected from numerous feedback sessions with my UX team, devs, and product owners to create hi-fidelity mockups, leading me to the final solution.  
Learnings and Next Steps
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‍Redesigning an application requires robustness and flexibility to adapt to a variety of lab processes. There were many talks about CP Print supporting different printers or even other departments outside of the print room. As a result, we had to design the application in phases and take an incremental approach to eventually reach our experience vision.

Initially, it was difficult when there was no vision or direction set but it allowed for an in-depth discovery period that enabled me to empathize with users and listen to what pain points they faced. If given more time, I would conduct usability testing with print technicians before development to identify what works well and what can be improved about the new application.
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We're waiting to collect user feedback from the pilot release and will provide more updates once we release CP Print to all workstations.
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