GE Persona Platform

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Client

General Electric

Role

UX Design Technologist

Duration

2 years

Project Type

B2B Industrial Technology

Overview

In a climate where digital transformation is more than a buzzword, GE Digital sought to redefine its application landscape. Enter the Persona Platform, a concept born out of the need for uniformity, efficiency, and user-centricity. As a UX Design Technologist, I led the design strategy for this internal enterprise PaaS application.

Spanning over 2 years, the project had me team up with cross-discipline professionals to turn this vision into reality. We faced challenges, pivoted strategies, and, above all, kept the user at the core of our design choices. With a diverse tech stack, we were set to build something revolutionary. The Persona Platform had one main mission: to consolidate and unify GE’s sprawling digital application portfolio across various business verticals. This was no small feat, and it required a methodical approach to not only design but also problem-solving.

 

In a climate where digital transformation is more than a buzzword, GE Digital sought to redefine its application landscape. Enter the Persona Platform, a concept born out of the need for uniformity, efficiency, and user-centricity. As a UX Design Technologist, I led the design strategy for this internal enterprise PaaS application.

Spanning over 2 years, the project had me team up with cross-discipline professionals to turn this vision into reality. We faced challenges, pivoted strategies, and, above all, kept the user at the core of our design choices. With a diverse tech stack, we were set to build something revolutionary.

 

The Persona Platform had one main mission: to consolidate and unify GE’s sprawling digital application portfolio across various business verticals. This was no small feat, and it required a methodical approach to not only design but also problem-solving.

Problem

Before the Persona Platform, GE’s digital ecosystem was fragmented at best and chaotic at worst. From Aviation to Healthcare, each business vertical had its own siloed codebase and design philosophy. It was like each department was speaking its own language, making communication and onboarding excessively complicated.

Not only were the various platforms plagued by a lack of documentation and structural inconsistencies, but they also suffered from elongated onboarding processes. New teams would have to undergo the Herculean task of deciphering the existing systems—no maps, no guides, just tribal knowledge.

The need for change was glaringly obvious. A comprehensive solution was essential to convert this unmanageable maze into a streamlined, user-friendly platform. Enter the goal of creating the Persona Platform.

  • Unorganized Portfolio
  • Lengthy Onboarding
  • Lack of Documentation

Goal

The overarching goal was crystal clear: Unification. We needed a single, unified platform to house the applications from various business verticals. This was the primary objective, but it wasn’t the only one. The Persona Platform was designed to be an engine of efficiency, a space where new projects could be launched seamlessly and effectively.

However, while the development team was an obvious beneficiary, the users at the ground level—the employees in GE’s factories—were not to be forgotten. The idea was to make the platform so user-centric that even the end-users could navigate it with ease and find value in its offerings.

The objective was ambitious but achievable: A platform that would serve both developers and factory workers, something scalable yet user-friendly, robust yet flexible. These were the pillars upon which the Persona Platform was built.

  • Unification
  • Efficiency
  • User-Centric

Challenge

Just because the goal was set didn’t mean the road was smooth. To realize this dream, we had to dig deep into the existing structures of each vertical, auditing each one’s application portfolio. Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve done a company-wide audit on over a hundred different app structures. The time and manpower it took were staggering, but it was an eye-opener in terms of scope and existing inefficiencies.


Not only did the audit uncover code bases that hadn’t been touched in years, but it also revealed a maze of different navigation structures and a swamp of redundant applications. This complexity added another layer to the challenge: how could we integrate these applications in a seamless manner?


And then came the dashboard. We hit another speed bump when we realized that factory workers needed a unique dashboard tailored to their specific needs. This was a whole other challenge, given the plethora of applications we had to consider integrating into this feature.

  • Company-wide Audit
  • Multiple Navigation Structures
  • Dashboard Requirements

Solution

Enter the card system, a solution that allows applications to be broken down into component cards, each carrying use case metadata. This genius idea facilitated navigation and gave us the flexibility we needed for dashboard customization. Now, we weren’t just designing for the devs; we had the factory folks in mind too.

That’s when we got into the “information architecture of people.” We partnered with managers across verticals to classify various job types, getting down to the most granular details. This allowed us to personalize the user experience at an unprecedented level, shaping the dashboards around the roles, not just the needs.

Of course, we had to distribute some of the workload. High-level managers contributed by sketching out their specific job-type dashboards, which we then vetted multiple times for practicality and usability. It was a collective effort that honed in on real-world application.

  • Card System
  • Information Architecture of People
  • Distributed Workload
View Project PDF

Results

Talk about a game-changer. We collaborated with GE Healthcare as our pilot vertical, testing the platform in technologically advanced facilities in Pensacola, FL, and Florence, Italy. The results? Phenomenal. A process that used to take 45 minutes was whittled down to just 3. The Persona Platform was now in 17 technologically mature production facilities globally and still counting.

The feedback from the ground up was overwhelmingly positive. We had not only made life easier for the development teams but also for the factory workers. With each iteration, based on real-world data, we refined the design to make it more effective and user-friendly. It’s one thing to build a system that works, but it’s another to build one that people actually want to use. With the Persona Platform, we achieved both. The platform has seen a spike in user engagement, and the real-world efficiency gains speak volumes.

  • Reduced Time in Routine Procedures
  • 17 Technologically Mature Facilities
  • Positive User Feedback