tech connect – fortune 100

Reimagining Support for a Worldwide Fleet of Field Technicians

UI UX RESEARCH
– 2019
introduction

InSight Tech Connect

Distributed field technicians often solve problems alone, far from headquarters — while core engineering teams operate with limited visibility into what’s actually happening onsite. That disconnect slows triage, repeats past mistakes, and hides valuable learning.

I explored whether a unified, mobile-forward tool could bring field work and engineering together — enabling faster triage, better collaboration, and a shared knowledge bank the organization had never had before.

2017 – 2021      PRODUCT DESIGNER (solo)
overview

What is field service enablement?

Field service enablement is about giving technicians the guidance, tools, and context they need while onsite — from documentation to work orders, notes, status updates, and communication.

When designed well, it doesn’t just support the field. It becomes the connective tissue across international teams maintaining similar turbo machinery — helping operations, support, and engineering learn from every job, not just the critical failures.

THE ASK

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How might we create a unified, mobile-first workflow that supports technicians in the field while feeding structured insights back to engineering — enabling faster triage and building a reusable knowledge bank?

problem

Technicians relied on disconnected workflows — paper notes, emails, ad-hoc messaging, and scattered documentation. Updates rarely made it back to engineering in a structured way. As a result, engineering triaged issues slowly, struggled to identify patterns, and had no central place to learn from field experience.

HYPOTHESIS

If technicians could log work, attach evidence, and surface patterns within one shared system, engineering teams would diagnose faster, reduce repeat failures, and improve decisions over time.

I believed the biggest unlock would come from turning field work from “one-off fixes” into recorded institutional knowledge — without adding burden to technicians.

Research

  • Observed technicians’ notes, screenshots, text threads, and informal processes to see where information died on the vine.

  • Captured where communication broke down — especially during escalations and post-incident reviews.

  • Identified redundant tools, duplicate data entry, and gaps where learning never made it back upstream.

Insights

Understanding that turbo machinery installations differ from facility to facility was a clear signal that I needed to design the task-completion workflow with the up-most flexibility.

♔

“We fix the same problem again and again — but nobody sees the pattern.”

♔

“I would like for status to match across other regions.”

♔

“I don’t have time to write long reports that match someone else’s. I just need one place to drop everything until I have to speak to my regional engineers.”

♔

“I wish there was a history of what happened last time — it would save so much time.”

Principles

Build for visibility –– triage once, leverage learnings everywhere

Build trust through continuity –– processes that are understood worldwide

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Unified Work Hub

Technicians view active jobs, capture notes, upload photos, and flag issues — all inside one system that automatically syncs back to engineering.

Structured Evidence Capture

Photos, steps taken, parts used, and outcomes are logged in consistent formats, creating searchable records without extra data entry.

Integrated Engineering Triage

Escalations trigger structured reports automatically, giving engineering a full picture — history, environment, and actions taken — in minutes, not days.

OUTCOMES

TechConnect became the organization’s first international shared knowledge bank for field work — searchable, reusable, and owned collectively.

Engineering gained faster triage capability, identifying recurring issues earlier and reducing time spent rediscovering past solutions.

Technicians spent less time duplicating effort and more time solving problems — while their work finally contributed to long-term organizational learning.

For the business, this shift meant more efficient operations, fewer repeated failures, and greater alignment between teams who once worked in silos.