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Advanced Panel Experience
Panels in Fusion 360 are like toolboxes that contain the specific tools you need for designing or engineering. In Electronics workspace, we needed a better way to organize panels. My role involved minimizing the limitations of existing panel behaviors and delivering an enhanced panel organization experience for Electronics users.
Timeline
May 2021 - July 2021
My Role
UX Design, Research
Tools
Figma, Qualtrics
What is Fusion 360?
Fusion 360 is a cloud-based software that helps engineers, architects and designers design, create and manufacture any 3D objects, such as furniture, toys and parts for machines. It is used by over 5M active users, and is the fastest-growing CAD software in the world.
Within Fusion 360, users can access multiple workspaces to efficiently carry out their design and engineering tasks. In this specific project, the main focus was on enhancing the panel experience within the Electronics workspace.
Problems
1.
The Electronics workspace had multiple panel needs than any other workspaces. But Fusion 360 legacy provided limited options for panel organization. This limitation had the potential to reduce customer’s work efficiency and overcrowd the screen.
Other workspaces
Electronics
2.
The existing panel behavior was odd. As the Electronic development team planned to introduce new backend system for panels, we aimed to avoid replicating the undesirable panel behaviors.
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You can fold the panels either sideways or up and down. You can also arrange them horizontally next to other panels.
However, hardly anyone would set up their panels like this, and implementing this behavior in the new backend system actually resulted in increased issues with system bugs and performance slowdowns.
Project Overview
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Discover
Develop
Review
Release
Post-launch iterations
Gathering user requirements (survey & audit)
Prototyping
Stakeholder review/approval
Making iterations based on the customer's feedback
Old
1. It's not possible to merge multiple panels into a single one.
2. Users have the flexibility to attach the panels to various locations according to their preference. However, when panels are attached at the top, they will automatically expand in width to match the width of the top area.
3. Moving panels from one side to another used to be a manual drag-and-drop, which could be cumbersome with multiple panels.
New
1. Users can group multiple panels using tabs.
2. Panels can only be attached in appropriate and meaningful locations.
3. Users can easily manage their panels through the right-click menu (also accessible through a three-dot icon).
Impact/Results
13K
Active Users
58+
Panels
8
Iterations
This new feature has changed the behavior of all panels within the Fusion 360 Electronics workspace, affecting over 13,000 monthly active users. The ultimate goal of the project was to extend this panel behavior to other workspaces in Fusion. However, it required further research and validation, and this effort is still ongoing. Up to this point, we went through 8 design iterations based on customer feedback and technical constraints.
See my other works
Project 1
Project 1
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