Reimagining seismic data showcasing

In the oil & gas industry, a quality data room is key for potential buyers or partners to make asset investment decisions. The global pandemic made it imperative to find secure ways to showcase data remotely. I led the discovery, analysis and design phases of a virtual data room concept.

MY ROLE

Service Designer
UX Designer

INSTRUMENTS

YEAR

Discovery workshop

Journey mapping

User Personas
Storyboarding
To-be journeys and process flows
Lo-fi wireframes

2020

The challenge

The project started with the goal of finding opportunities to enable data discovery workflows. It was developed in collaboration with one the main customers of my client, which gave us first-hand insight into the problem, Also, it allowed us to co-create a solution that would bring value to the service provider and the customer.

We followed a double-diamond approach, starting by observing and finding problems worth solving. We followed deepening our understanding of one of the identified problems and then, ideated potential solutions. We finished prioritizing and looking at what was possible to implement and deliver.

This project explored ways to enable business-to-business secure data showcasing. In pandemic times, the need to enable remote data room services became even more relevant. One of the main concerns of organizations in the oil and gas industry is data leakage, that is, allowing others to see, store and use company-owned or vendor data without being entitled to it.

Cloud services have allowed data to be accessed almost everywhere, however, data showcasing still happens on-site to have control about what others can see and for how long.

One of the main opportunities identified was that there was no clear understanding about the type of users and their individual needs. Along with SME's and end-users, these personas were created and used along the whole process

The users

The host

Role: Generalist - Explorationist

Academic Background: Geoscience

Experience: 10 years, Masters

Description: Responsible for bringing multiple Perspectives and domains together, After significant depth of knowledge acquired, may be referred as an SME in their area.

Goals

Identify stakeholders and teams including SMEs, generalists and specialists
Understand an asset type, AOI or a specific workflow
Create value to the business

Frustrations

Cumbersome process to find and procure data
When a key contact leaves the company, it impacts negatively the workflow

Needs

To know which data is SME approved
A way to organize and share data
Retain/view historical knowledge/decisions

The attendee

Role: Generalist

Academic Background: Geoscience

Experience: 14 years, PhD

Description: Ensures all fundamental aspects of the opportunity and is present in all the stages of the opportunity assessment. Receives input from specialists before a data rom

Goals

Set the desired outcomes and expectations for the data room
To have as much input as possible from specialists to be prepared for the data room, "what we are searching for and why"

Frustrations

Getting data ready during DR to evaluate and interrogate
Seismic data presented is not at the same technical standard

Needs

Be able to bring own interpretation
Building a report efficiently and take it home
Processing reports (technology used)

Discover

Through remote workshops, participants captured the current experience, identifying the touchpoints, people, tools and technologies involved. Afterwards, the pain-points were highlighted in order to prioritize the focus for the ideation phase.

Define

The findings of the workshops allowed us to define the moments in the journey that were critical in the process form the attendee perspective

Collecting company knowledge
Co-render data
Debriefing

Having identified them, we created a to-be-journey capturing the touch-points, processes and needs fulfilled. There were many variables and stage-gates during the process that will determine if the project would proceed. To capture those variables, we created a future process flow.

Develop

Farm-in [Reviewed Journeys] - Unnamed Area.png

Deliver

In the last phase of the engagement, we went through an iterative process to define what the digital side of the solution would look like. Due to the confidentiality of the project, I can't explain the details of the solution.

After the low fidelity wireframes were approved and validated with end-users, they were handed off to the UI team to apply the corporate branding and styles. This solution is currently being built.