mobile app for miners
LOGGING IN
Mine Operators, Supervisors and Maintenance personnel all log into the same app at the start of their shift using their name and password. They don’t use the same device every day but by logging in, the app can identify them and stores all of their work progress.
main dashboard
After logging in, users see information tailored specifically to them and that day’s shift in their main dashboards.
Supervisors will see an overview of their shift that shows them all the Operators they are responsible for that day, their location in the mine, the machine they are using and their task progress.
Operators will see the tasks allocated to them during that shift, the location(s) for those tasks, the machine and their progress. They will also see any non-allocated tasks they can pick up if they have extra time.
starting a Task
When Mine Operators tap to start a task, they see some further details about that task which may include comments and photos from their Supervisor or the last Operator who worked on that task. They also may have to go through a checklist related to the machine they will operate for that task.
According to our research, many Operators have limited reading skills and tap quickly through the checklist without understanding what is being asked of them, leading to inaccurate answers and ultimately machine issues during their shift. For this reason, it was important to design the checklist questions in a visual way that would make it easy for them to answer accurately and avoid machine breakdown.
Task Progress
Once a Mine Operator has started a task, they are required to log their progress as they work.
The app they used before our re-design to do this was painfully out-of-date, with small entry fields and buttons that only allowed users to enter amounts (usually tons) manually or in increments of 1. During our research we discovered that Operators almost never entered their progress in such small increments, pausing only when they had completed an increment of 10 or more.
Therefore we designed an interface that, depending on the unit, displayed logical increments for the Operator to enter by tapping on a large, user-friendly button. We also included a progress tracker to give positive feedback to the Operator and motivate them during their shift.
