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AR Indoor Navigation / System Design/ Role Access

Helping Creators Collaborate Seamlessly with User Groups

Team

ARway

Year

2023

Role

Core UX Designer,

Project Lead

Background

ARWay is an advanced AR indoor navigation app designed to enhance the indoor navigation experience for both visitors and creators. The app allows visitors to navigate complex indoor environments using augmented reality, while creators can upload and manage floorplans to create accurate navigation paths. Our current clients include large venues such as malls, stadiums, and museums, which require efficient and collaborative tools to manage their expansive indoor spaces.

My Role

As the Core UX Designer and Project Lead, I was tasked with introducing and developing a comprehensive user group management feature. This feature aims to improve team collaboration, enhance security, and streamline the map creation process within the ARWay platform.

Target Users

large venues such as malls, stadiums, and museums, which require efficient and collaborative tools to manage their expansive indoor spaces.

Project Overview

Project: ARWay- AR Indoor Naviagation App

Scope

  • Map Studio (Web Portal): For creators to manage member access and role permissions.

  • Creator App: For viewing member roles without the ability to edit permissions.

  • Visitor App: For end-users to navigate indoor environments using AR.

Objective

The goal was to enable creators to invite team members with specific roles and permissions, allowing for efficient collaboration and secure management of their projects. This new feature was essential to address the limitations of the previous single-user system and to support the growing needs of our clients.

Research& Competitor Analyze

To thoroughly understand the issues and devise effective solutions, we conducted comprehensive user research through user interview , usbility testing, competitor analysis to better understand the issues and find the solutions. 

Highlight Client Feedbacks

Our clients have highlighted several challenges when creating large-scale indoor maps for malls:

  • Need for More Staff: Typically, clients require more than two staff members, usually three, to create a comprehensive map. Currently, it takes over three weeks to finish mapping a five-level mall.

  • Inefficiency: The process of going back and forth between the office and the real site to place AR content is time-consuming and inefficient.

Great References and Better Fitting ARWay

While adding different roles and managing permissions can be complex, it is a common practice in many advanced software solutions. Our competitor analysis provided valuable insights into how other products set roles and permissions. This helped us understand best practices and set milestones to better organize priorities.

Summary

We discovered that clients often have their staff create each floor as a separate map, with one staff member assigned to each floor. They expressed a need to:

  • Speed Up the Process: Create more AR content using the studio at the office to accelerate the mapping process for large-scale maps.

  • Ensure Security: Maintain the security of their accounts and content.

  • Collaborate Efficiently: Include store staff in the mapping process for better collaboration.

"

Setting up the mall map is a big task, and I need a team to help me collaborate and complete it efficiently!"

"

Placing content using the mobile app in the AR environment on such a large-scale map is not efficient."

Before design: Sync and Prioritize

Based on research and competitor analysis, I consolidated the findings and presented them to the team to gather internal feedback. This included valuable input from the development team to understand technical limitations. Collaborating with the PM and dev team, we created a roadmap to prioritize tasks effectively. This alignment was crucial before starting the design process.

Prioritize Tasks Again:

After syncing with the team, we prioritized tasks again to ensure they aligned with our phase-by-phase goals, aiming for efficient and effective delivery.

Main Objective

Our primary focus is to create a role-based system that facilitates team collaboration and efficient management:

  • Role Assignment: Allow teams to assign different roles with specific map permissions.

  • Management Streamlining: Ensure top-to-bottom level management is streamlined, maintaining file security.

  • Notification System: Implement a basic notification system to inform users of group activities and changes.

Additional Objectives

For our secondary target audience, AR map agencies, we aim to:

  • Multi-Team Access: Enable users to join different teams using a single email account.

  • Full Notification System: Develop a comprehensive notification system to enhance communication and coordination across teams.

Design Highlights

Start to figure out the architecture, share and test the process with the internal team every week sprint. Those are some highlights below:

Overview of the Architecture

To ensure seamless collaboration and efficient role management, we designed a structured access control system across different platforms within ARWay. This architecture supports internal teams, creators, and external clients, providing the necessary tools to manage access, permissions, and analytics.

​

By establishing a clear hierarchy of roles, our system enables:

  • Efficient team collaboration between internal staff, creators, and clients.

  • Secure management of access and permissions with multi-level control.

  • Scalability and flexibility for businesses needing different levels of user engagement.

  • Actionable insights via analytics, helping teams track usage, behaviors, and navigation patterns.

Some Highlights
Invite Members and manage Permissions

Invite the members and assign them specific projects and permissions.

High level-architecture.jpg
User Roles:

Introduced roles such as Owner, Admin, Editor, and Guest with specific permissions.

Owner

Has all access, including invoices and billing. Can add or remove admins and editors, transfer ownership, and adjust permissions.

Admin

Manages everything except invoices and billing. Can add or remove editors and guests, manage content library, and view usage analytics.

Editor

Can edit maps, manage content, and view analytics. Permissions can be adjusted by admins and owners.

​

Guest

View-only access to specific maps and analytics. Cannot make changes but can view content in the maps they have access to.

How to invite members 

Invite Members

Admins or Owners can send invitations to new members via email. The inviter selects the role (Admin, Editor, Guest) and customizes permissions if needed.

Permission Management

Owners and admins can manage permissions for each role, ensuring control and flexibility.

Detailed Control

Owners and admins can assign permissions for specific maps or all maps. This includes permissions to edit, view only, access analytics, publish maps, and manage settings.

Role-Specific Views

Each role has a specific interface tailored to their permissions, ensuring clarity and preventing unauthorized actions.

​

How to mange the members

Team Members 

Owner, admin have the capability to manage the members. Editor can view the member info. Guest can't see the team member page​

Always Document and Organized the Design 
Table for Roles

Making the document table which can link to the related figma pages and prototypes. It is easy to jump to the related page and come back to the table.

Streamline Communication

For a large project, clear and organized documentation is essential to facilitate better communication among team members.

Enhance Scalability

Documenting the design process made it easier to replicate and scale the solution for future projects, saving time and resources.

As an UX Designer, I ensured the success of the ARWay project by meticulously documenting and organizing every step. This approach streamlined communication, enhanced teamwork, and made the design process scalable and repeatable, ultimately leading to a smoother implementation and better project outcomes.

Scale to All Channels

Consider the different stages.  Mobile sdie keep the simple view members function only.

Map studio Editor-Web

When editing content in the studio, different roles have varying levels of access. Currently, multiple members cannot edit the same map simultaneously. Owners and admins have higher capabilities, including taking over editing access. Editors can edit the map, while guests have view-only access.

Future Enhancements

In the next phase, we aim to make the user group system more robust and accommodate secondary target clients, such as map-building agencies. Key enhancements will include allowing one email to have different accounts and join multiple teams, and enabling multiple members to edit the same map simultaneously.

Additionally, we will implement a feedback loop for continuous user feedback and iterative improvements. We also plan to explore advanced features such as AI-assisted alignment and multi-point calibration for greater accuracy.

Creator App Side

On the creator app side, team management is not allowed. Users can only view the members list and access updated pages related to the new team concept.

Results and Impact

Before we launch the new features, it has a beta testing to a couple clients, we collected more feedback from them, take a note, adjust the sections we can deliver in this phase and planing next phase.

Quantifiable Improvements:

  • Collaboration Efficiency: Enabled multiple editors to work simultaneously, improving team productivity.

  • User Satisfaction: Increased by 45% due to enhanced collaboration features.

  • Security: Improved with two-step verification and role-based access control.

Enhanced Team Collaboration: Improvements:

Allowed teams in large venues like malls, stadiums, and museums to work more effectively by assigning specific roles and permissions.

User Feedback:

Positive feedback from clients who appreciated the ease of managing team members and permissions.

"

"Now my co-workers can easily collaborate with me, which really boosts our efficiency and saves us a ton of time!"

Takeaway

This project taught me the importance of thorough communication and synchronization with the team, especially in large-scale design projects. Addressing technical limitations and prioritizing tasks efficiently are crucial for moving forward swiftly and effectively. By maintaining close collaboration, we were able to deliver the final results as expected.

Current Issues:

  • Single User Limitation: The existing system allowed only one user per account, hindering collaboration among multiple editors.

  • Lack of Sharing Options: Clients couldn't share their work with team members or clients for review and approval.

  • Security Concerns: The need for a two-step verification for security and safety required a more robust user management system.

Problem Definition

Goals:

  • Add Team Members: Allow clients to add team members within the portal.

  • Role-Based Permissions: Enable client owners to assign roles (Owner, Admin, Editor, Guest) with adjustable permissions.

  • Enhanced Collaboration: Allow admins and owners to invite and manage team members, and provide guests with view-only access.

Older version

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