
### Introduction

BHP is an Australian mining company with recognition across the globe. On an active mine site, drivers rely on radio communications to move around the site safely. There’s often some back and forth on these calls so all related calls are referred to as an interaction (or conversation if you like). These interactions must be assessed for compliance which involves manual identification, transcription and scoring in Excel.

To simplify this process, I was tasked with transforming it into an intuitive web application.

### Design Process

Prior to joining, AWS spent a good chunk of time developing a bare-bones version of the website. This allowed them to focus on getting the functionality up and running. An interesting aspect to this was the use of machine learning which meant identification and transcription could be automated. While their focus wasn’t on the user experience, this gave me a great starting point!

I began by exploring the currently system (Excel spreadsheets), and the first version of the website. It gave me a good sense of which areas could use some improvement. Based on this, plus discussions with the rest of the project team, I was able to make a detailed plan of attack for the next 6 months of design. Creating this plan not only kept me on track, but also kept the rest of the team informed about what to expect. We worked as a team to nut out the epics that all of our stories would live under, and then we each added in our tickets, along with estimates.

![](/BHP/AWS%20-%20clips.png)

![](/BHP/AWS%20-%20verify%20interaction.png)

First up was a heuristic evaluation of the website, utilising a curated list of heuristics. Some common themes for the issues found were confusing/conflicting terminology, poor error handling, cluttered UI and accessibility issues. This gave me a few key design goals to work towards.

Now the users weren’t using this new website just yet as it was still being developed, however, they had been able to have a play around with it. They’d spent enough time with it to point out what’s working for them, and what’s not. I conducted several user interviews and task-based usability testing sessions with them, one-on-one, to gather their feedback. To keep track of all of my findings, I logged everything within Confluence. I synthesised my findings and boiled it down into a summary of actionable items at the end. One of my biggest findings was that the overall process flow was unclear within the website, meaning the navigation wasn’t quite right.

I worked closely with the end users to map out what their ideal workflow is for assessing radio communications. Based on this, I was able to boil it down and determine a simplified IA (or site structure).

![](/BHP/AWS%20-%20Site%20map%20exploration.png)

From here, I was able to get stuck into the UI side of things. To streamline the process, I utilised an existing design system so I could spend more time focusing on the UX rather than low-level component building. With a few minor tweaks to things like the font and colour scheme to match their branding. Screen-by-screen, I would build a rough design in Figma, share this with the internal project team to make sure it was feasible, and then share it with the end users to get their feedback. I would iterate on these designs based on feedback until we were in a good spot.

As these designs started to wrap up, I shifted focus to testing the new designs that had been implemented within the website. Essentially, making sure what was designed matches what’s been developed, but also to make sure the design still makes sense in action. Any issues that came up were added to Jira after a quick chat with the developers.


Improve mine site safety by uplifting a key tool used to assess on-site communication.

BHP.

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