Challenge Summary
Welcome to the "GET - Rapid UX - TMS Dashboard Design Concepts Challenge"! We are looking for your help in creating the Data Visualization Dashboard for our Transportation Management System (TMS) application. TMS is software that enables railroad companies to control the end to end operations of receiving and delivering railcars to their customers.
What is a GET "Rapid UX Challenge"?
GE Transportation is excited to include the Topcoder Design Community within their design process. The GET (GE Transportation) Rapid UX Challenge is leveraging ideas from our famous RUX challenges and integrating it into how the GE team would like to rapidly create concepts for their design workshops and customers. This challenge has a specific format and timeline to meet the GET teams deadlines.
The GET "Rapid UX Challenges" provides you with an opportunity to showcase your design concepts and user experience (UI/UX) design skills to one of the largest companies in the world!
Rapid UX Challenge Format
- Challenge starts: Thursday, April 6, @5PM EDT UTC-4
- GE is available on Friday for Q&A (Get your questions in early!)
- Rolling Checkpoint is Monday, April 10 @7AM EDT UTC-4
- The GE Design team has scheduled time on Monday to review and workshop with your design concepts.
- The GE Design team will provide Checkpoint feedback by end of day Monday.
- Final Designs are due next Thursday, April 13, @7AM EDT UTC-4
- IMPORTANT!! Start asking questions/checking things out early as GET is prepping for a conference so we cannot modify the challenge schedule!!
Note: You do not need to have any design challenge experience to join this challenge - Just jump in andThe goal of this challenge is to take the provided design problem, analyze the user experience and provide design concepts and visual ideas on how the application might look and work!
Design Problem
We want to design a future dashboard for TMS, a software that enables railroad companies to control the end to end operations of receiving and delivering railcars to their customers. In the near future, more and more of the manual processes will be automated to reduce human errors, and with the addition of modern technologies, we will be able to increase the visibility of where trains and railcars are located at any given time.
Challenge Goals
The two main personas for this Dashboard tool are the Business Manager and the Operations Manager. The goal is to show how based on users roles and responsibilities, the TMS Dashboard adapts to meet users needs and enables them to increase their productivity. The content of the dashboard may be different for each user, but it's important to maintain the cohesiveness of its look and feel.
We are offering 5 Prize Placements, 5 Rolling Checkpoints and a Bonus for using Sketch!
1) 1st Place: $1700
2) 2nd Place: $800
3) 3rd Place: $300
4) 4th Place: $200
5) 5th Place: $100
- Plus 5 placements for Rolling Checkpoint prizes @$50 each!
- Bonus: In this challenge, Topcoder is offering a BONUS $50 for each designer who competes and submits using Sketch as their design tool (Design must be a valid submission)
Note: Important Rolling Checkpoint Details
- GE Team and adroc will be available on Friday for Q&A. (Get your questions in early!)
- Fajar will be available Saturday/Sunday for questions
- You must watch the Forum for your feedback!
*Qualifying checkpoint submissions will win $50 (5 Placements)
Design Expectations
- There is no limitation on the format in which the dashboard should take on. Feel free to explore with graphical representations, charts/graphs, heat maps, and other innovative data visualization methods that best fit each persona/user
- We would like to focus on more screen flows and details for the Business Manager Dashboard, but would at least get a snapshot of what the dashboard would be for the Operation Manager looks like too
- The two personas/users share a lot of metrics they care about, but because the nature of their roles, they will want to see them differently (see details in personas)
Design Consideration
- Clean and streamlined design and user flow
- Easy to find all the necessary information
- Show us concepts and ideas for how things could be designed and function.
General Requirements
- This application is going to be developed as a Desktop Web Application
- Screen Sizes: This will be used on a large screen!
- Desktop Standard (1920px by 1080px - Landscape)
Branding Guidelines
- Branding should follow GET Design Toolkit (check "GET Design Toolkit.zip")
- This should be a serious/useful designed application
- We are looking for concepts and ideas!
Challenge Documents
- Railroad terms (railroadterms.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortline_railroad)
- Examples of some basic graphs of existing information to use for context (Bad Orders.pdf, Dwell.pdf, Hazmats.pdf, Interchanges.pdf, Inventory.pdf, Traffic Lanes.pdf, Operation Metrics (Customer Commitment).xlsx)
- Rough workshop sketches of initial concepts for some of the metrics (Concept Sketches.pdf)
- Link to TMS page on GE Transportation
- Persona details (TMS Persona Ecosystem.pdf)
- GET Design Toolkit for Branding Guidelines (GET Design Toolkit.zip)
Possible Screens & Functionality
01) Business Manager Dashboard
Primary Persona – Business Manager
Who am I: he/she works in an office setting, oversees the daily operations of the railroad(s), manages relationships with customers, and are often direct reports to an executive of his company.
Goals for the dashboard:
To have visually distinctive representations of historical data to help him/her monitor and detect trends in his railroad(s)' performance, so he/she can make smarter decisions about future business and to better serve their customers.
Top five metrics for the Business Manager:
We likely see these 5 metrics forming a single dashboard screen, allowing users to drill down into the details. You can explore extracting one metric into multiple widgets if you see fit. We are open any additional information you think might be important to the persona (e.g weather). As always - we are open to new ideas.
1. Customer Commitment
Scenario: Business Manager receives a complaint from a customer about not receiving his railcars, he then goes to his dashboard and drills down in customer commitment section to see his commitment history for that customer. He wants to know when/why they didn't meet their commitments
-- Want to be able to see % of commitments met by year, month, week, day
-- The threshold of what's acceptable could differ depending on customers (i.e. need to meet our commitments 98% of the time for customer X, 95% for customer Y)
-- Interested in drilling down to see when the railroad failed to meet commitments and why
-- Some reasons for delay: Customer Gate Locked, Crew Late, Damaged Track, Locomotive Failure, Inclement Weather, Derailment, Customer requested late shift, customer not ready for shift, customer requested early shift, Crossings not cleaned
2. Interchange Performance
Scenario: There's a disagreement about whether a railroad partner has delivered the promised railcars, Business Manager can go to his dashboard to check if they have received the railcars, he can also check to see how historically this railroad has done in delivering promised railcars, and see if he needs to address it with the railroad partner
-- Number of Interchange Received at each station organized by railroad partners
-- Number of Interchange Delivered at each station organized by railroad partners
-- Interested in seeing the promised number of railcars and the time of delivery by each railroad partner, and the actual number of railcars and the time of delivery
3. Asset Utilization
Scenario: At the start of the day, Business Manager checks his dashboard to get a sense of how the railroad is doing currently, and he sees there is a large number of railcars at Station X with more than 24 hrs of dwell, he drills down to see more detailed information about the dwelling railcars. This alarms him, so he'd call the Operations Manager at Station X to ask what's going on
-- Railcars are the most important assets, the duration that railcars not in storage are sitting idle (dwell time) is one of the main measures of how well a railroad is performing.
---- Moving railcars: velocity of railcar
---- Sitting railcars: number of cars active (dwell), number of cars in storage (track capacity)
-- Crew: how many crews have started, hrs worked, number of railcars moved per crew, and fuel used per crew
-- Locomotives: horsepower, idle time, down time
-- Fuel: gallons per GTM or railcar
-- Run through power: need to monitor how long the railroad is using borrowed locomotives, after a set number of hours it accrues cost
-- Track Issues
4. Regulatory Compliance
Scenario: each crew needs to be certified to work on the railroad. This certificate needs to be renewed every 3 years. The Business Manager receives an alert about a certain crew member's certification coming to expiration. He is able to drill down to see which crew.
-- Crew certification: how many certificates are close to expiring or overdue
-- Hazardous materials in the railroad's possession
-- Hours worked by each crew
5. Actual Revenue vs Project Revenue per month by
Scenario: The Business Manager is responsible for managing rates at which the railroad charges its customers. He uses the historic performance by the following categories to inform his decision to adjust the rate to charge his customers. i.e. he sees the trend of an increasing gap of actual vs projected revenue for Customer X in the past few months, he might need to communicate with his customers and see if he should lower their rates
-- Interchange
-- Commodity
-- Customer
-- Traffic Lane
02) Operations Manager Dashboard
Secondary Persona – Operations Manager
Who am I: he/she works on the railroad, manages the ground crews, delegates work orders, and reports to a Business Manager.
Goals for the dashboard:
To have clear visibility of any changes happening in the yard(s), so he/she can resolve any risks that can prevent the railroad from meeting its commitments to their customers. Not only does the Operations Manager need to know what’s going on in his yard(s) now, he/she wants foresight into upcoming railcar events and incoming inventory, so he/she can better plan work for his crews and be proactive in risk prevention.
Example Scenario:
Operations Manager receives an alert about an upcoming snowstorm in 8 hours, he is able to look up the upcoming inventory, and notify customers about possible delay in delivery.
Top 3 metrics for Operations Manager:
1. Asset Management
-- Inventory (current, incoming – 12hr, outgoing)
-- Track capacity (cars in storage, active cars)
2. Interchange Volume by Road
3. Bad Orders (time sensitive)
03) Marvel Prototype
- As part of this challenge, you must upload your files to MarvelApp
- We want to use Marvel App to provide direct and fast feedback!
- No additional functionality is required! Just make sure your screen(s) are in the correct viewing order (number them 00, 01, 02, 03, etc.)
- If you do not have access to the Topcoder Marvel App Account please contact adroc@topcoder.com or fajar.mln@gmail.com
- You MUST include your Topcoder Marvel App URL (share view, not project view) within your Notes file
Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
- Overall idea and execution of concepts
- How well does your design align with the objectives of the challenge
- Execution and thoughtfulness put into the solving the problem
- Overall design and user experience
- Cleanliness of screen design and user flow
Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.
Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as a layered PSD file, or Adobe Illustrator as a layered AI file or Sketch!
Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase, you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors. We may ask you to update your design or graphics based on checkpoint feedback.
What is a GET "Rapid UX Challenge"?
GE Transportation is excited to include the Topcoder Design Community within their design process. The GET (GE Transportation) Rapid UX Challenge is leveraging ideas from our famous RUX challenges and integrating it into how the GE team would like to rapidly create concepts for their design workshops and customers. This challenge has a specific format and timeline to meet the GET teams deadlines.
The GET "Rapid UX Challenges" provides you with an opportunity to showcase your design concepts and user experience (UI/UX) design skills to one of the largest companies in the world!
Rapid UX Challenge Format
- Challenge starts: Thursday, April 6, @5PM EDT UTC-4
- GE is available on Friday for Q&A (Get your questions in early!)
- Rolling Checkpoint is Monday, April 10 @7AM EDT UTC-4
- The GE Design team has scheduled time on Monday to review and workshop with your design concepts.
- The GE Design team will provide Checkpoint feedback by end of day Monday.
- Final Designs are due next Thursday, April 13, @7AM EDT UTC-4
- IMPORTANT!! Start asking questions/checking things out early as GET is prepping for a conference so we cannot modify the challenge schedule!!
Note: You do not need to have any design challenge experience to join this challenge - Just jump in andThe goal of this challenge is to take the provided design problem, analyze the user experience and provide design concepts and visual ideas on how the application might look and work!
Design Problem
We want to design a future dashboard for TMS, a software that enables railroad companies to control the end to end operations of receiving and delivering railcars to their customers. In the near future, more and more of the manual processes will be automated to reduce human errors, and with the addition of modern technologies, we will be able to increase the visibility of where trains and railcars are located at any given time.
Challenge Goals
The two main personas for this Dashboard tool are the Business Manager and the Operations Manager. The goal is to show how based on users roles and responsibilities, the TMS Dashboard adapts to meet users needs and enables them to increase their productivity. The content of the dashboard may be different for each user, but it's important to maintain the cohesiveness of its look and feel.
We are offering 5 Prize Placements, 5 Rolling Checkpoints and a Bonus for using Sketch!
1) 1st Place: $1700
2) 2nd Place: $800
3) 3rd Place: $300
4) 4th Place: $200
5) 5th Place: $100
- Plus 5 placements for Rolling Checkpoint prizes @$50 each!
- Bonus: In this challenge, Topcoder is offering a BONUS $50 for each designer who competes and submits using Sketch as their design tool (Design must be a valid submission)
Note: Important Rolling Checkpoint Details
- GE Team and adroc will be available on Friday for Q&A. (Get your questions in early!)
- Fajar will be available Saturday/Sunday for questions
- You must watch the Forum for your feedback!
*Qualifying checkpoint submissions will win $50 (5 Placements)
Design Expectations
- There is no limitation on the format in which the dashboard should take on. Feel free to explore with graphical representations, charts/graphs, heat maps, and other innovative data visualization methods that best fit each persona/user
- We would like to focus on more screen flows and details for the Business Manager Dashboard, but would at least get a snapshot of what the dashboard would be for the Operation Manager looks like too
- The two personas/users share a lot of metrics they care about, but because the nature of their roles, they will want to see them differently (see details in personas)
Design Consideration
- Clean and streamlined design and user flow
- Easy to find all the necessary information
- Show us concepts and ideas for how things could be designed and function.
General Requirements
- This application is going to be developed as a Desktop Web Application
- Screen Sizes: This will be used on a large screen!
- Desktop Standard (1920px by 1080px - Landscape)
Branding Guidelines
- Branding should follow GET Design Toolkit (check "GET Design Toolkit.zip")
- This should be a serious/useful designed application
- We are looking for concepts and ideas!
Challenge Documents
- Railroad terms (railroadterms.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortline_railroad)
- Examples of some basic graphs of existing information to use for context (Bad Orders.pdf, Dwell.pdf, Hazmats.pdf, Interchanges.pdf, Inventory.pdf, Traffic Lanes.pdf, Operation Metrics (Customer Commitment).xlsx)
- Rough workshop sketches of initial concepts for some of the metrics (Concept Sketches.pdf)
- Link to TMS page on GE Transportation
- Persona details (TMS Persona Ecosystem.pdf)
- GET Design Toolkit for Branding Guidelines (GET Design Toolkit.zip)
Possible Screens & Functionality
01) Business Manager Dashboard
Primary Persona – Business Manager
Who am I: he/she works in an office setting, oversees the daily operations of the railroad(s), manages relationships with customers, and are often direct reports to an executive of his company.
Goals for the dashboard:
To have visually distinctive representations of historical data to help him/her monitor and detect trends in his railroad(s)' performance, so he/she can make smarter decisions about future business and to better serve their customers.
Top five metrics for the Business Manager:
We likely see these 5 metrics forming a single dashboard screen, allowing users to drill down into the details. You can explore extracting one metric into multiple widgets if you see fit. We are open any additional information you think might be important to the persona (e.g weather). As always - we are open to new ideas.
1. Customer Commitment
Scenario: Business Manager receives a complaint from a customer about not receiving his railcars, he then goes to his dashboard and drills down in customer commitment section to see his commitment history for that customer. He wants to know when/why they didn't meet their commitments
-- Want to be able to see % of commitments met by year, month, week, day
-- The threshold of what's acceptable could differ depending on customers (i.e. need to meet our commitments 98% of the time for customer X, 95% for customer Y)
-- Interested in drilling down to see when the railroad failed to meet commitments and why
-- Some reasons for delay: Customer Gate Locked, Crew Late, Damaged Track, Locomotive Failure, Inclement Weather, Derailment, Customer requested late shift, customer not ready for shift, customer requested early shift, Crossings not cleaned
2. Interchange Performance
Scenario: There's a disagreement about whether a railroad partner has delivered the promised railcars, Business Manager can go to his dashboard to check if they have received the railcars, he can also check to see how historically this railroad has done in delivering promised railcars, and see if he needs to address it with the railroad partner
-- Number of Interchange Received at each station organized by railroad partners
-- Number of Interchange Delivered at each station organized by railroad partners
-- Interested in seeing the promised number of railcars and the time of delivery by each railroad partner, and the actual number of railcars and the time of delivery
3. Asset Utilization
Scenario: At the start of the day, Business Manager checks his dashboard to get a sense of how the railroad is doing currently, and he sees there is a large number of railcars at Station X with more than 24 hrs of dwell, he drills down to see more detailed information about the dwelling railcars. This alarms him, so he'd call the Operations Manager at Station X to ask what's going on
-- Railcars are the most important assets, the duration that railcars not in storage are sitting idle (dwell time) is one of the main measures of how well a railroad is performing.
---- Moving railcars: velocity of railcar
---- Sitting railcars: number of cars active (dwell), number of cars in storage (track capacity)
-- Crew: how many crews have started, hrs worked, number of railcars moved per crew, and fuel used per crew
-- Locomotives: horsepower, idle time, down time
-- Fuel: gallons per GTM or railcar
-- Run through power: need to monitor how long the railroad is using borrowed locomotives, after a set number of hours it accrues cost
-- Track Issues
4. Regulatory Compliance
Scenario: each crew needs to be certified to work on the railroad. This certificate needs to be renewed every 3 years. The Business Manager receives an alert about a certain crew member's certification coming to expiration. He is able to drill down to see which crew.
-- Crew certification: how many certificates are close to expiring or overdue
-- Hazardous materials in the railroad's possession
-- Hours worked by each crew
5. Actual Revenue vs Project Revenue per month by
Scenario: The Business Manager is responsible for managing rates at which the railroad charges its customers. He uses the historic performance by the following categories to inform his decision to adjust the rate to charge his customers. i.e. he sees the trend of an increasing gap of actual vs projected revenue for Customer X in the past few months, he might need to communicate with his customers and see if he should lower their rates
-- Interchange
-- Commodity
-- Customer
-- Traffic Lane
02) Operations Manager Dashboard
Secondary Persona – Operations Manager
Who am I: he/she works on the railroad, manages the ground crews, delegates work orders, and reports to a Business Manager.
Goals for the dashboard:
To have clear visibility of any changes happening in the yard(s), so he/she can resolve any risks that can prevent the railroad from meeting its commitments to their customers. Not only does the Operations Manager need to know what’s going on in his yard(s) now, he/she wants foresight into upcoming railcar events and incoming inventory, so he/she can better plan work for his crews and be proactive in risk prevention.
Example Scenario:
Operations Manager receives an alert about an upcoming snowstorm in 8 hours, he is able to look up the upcoming inventory, and notify customers about possible delay in delivery.
Top 3 metrics for Operations Manager:
1. Asset Management
-- Inventory (current, incoming – 12hr, outgoing)
-- Track capacity (cars in storage, active cars)
2. Interchange Volume by Road
3. Bad Orders (time sensitive)
03) Marvel Prototype
- As part of this challenge, you must upload your files to MarvelApp
- We want to use Marvel App to provide direct and fast feedback!
- No additional functionality is required! Just make sure your screen(s) are in the correct viewing order (number them 00, 01, 02, 03, etc.)
- If you do not have access to the Topcoder Marvel App Account please contact adroc@topcoder.com or fajar.mln@gmail.com
- You MUST include your Topcoder Marvel App URL (share view, not project view) within your Notes file
Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
- Overall idea and execution of concepts
- How well does your design align with the objectives of the challenge
- Execution and thoughtfulness put into the solving the problem
- Overall design and user experience
- Cleanliness of screen design and user flow
Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.
Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as a layered PSD file, or Adobe Illustrator as a layered AI file or Sketch!
Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase, you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors. We may ask you to update your design or graphics based on checkpoint feedback.
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.