Ansys Discovery
Ansys (Synopsys) is the world’s largest engineering simulation company with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue.
TYPICAL USER
Mechanical engineers
SCENARIO
Run variation study to find the best design
GOAL
Increase efficiency Reduce learning curve
MY ROLE
Product design
TEAM
PM Frontend Dev Backend Dev
TIMELINE
2 months
What is Ansys Discovery?
3D design software that allows engineers to quickly explore and test ideas with real-time simulation early in the development process.
Challenge
Pop-outs clutter for Variation Study
Variation Study helped design engineers find the best-performing design, but the experience was cluttered. Multiple pop-outs blocked the workspace, overlapped, and were hard to manage.
Initial research
Understanding logistics
Since I’m not from an engineering background, I started by trying to understand the logistics. With limited resources and time, I started with help docs and scheduled an interview with PM.
Help docs
PM meeting
Goals
Replace pop-outs with tabs
Iteration 1
Removed overlapping pop-outs
Some actions are better grouped together
Still limited by space, hard to manage 100+ variations
Deep research
Understanding user flow
To validate and truly understand the user flow, I did further research. This time, I was able to find the training recordings and conducted 2 informal interviews to get some deep insights about the flow.
Training recordings
ACE interview (ansys customer excellence)
Proxy user
Restructured around users’ mental models
Full-screen view for better clarity
Iteration 2
More space and better clarity
Streamlined workflow
Users need model context while setting up parameters.
Window view & dynamic display
Final Iteration
Highlights parameter on hover
Auto expands for other tabs the first time