Fritz
Restructuring an astronomy analytics platform to improve accessibility among astronomers.
Team Members
3 Designers
3 Developers
Role
Product Designer
Project Lead
Timeline
Oct 2023 - Feb 2024
Skills
Prototyping
Visual Design
Communication
Project Type
Client Work
Designing an analytics platform that feels more responsive and accessible
OVERVIEW
Fritz is a web application that streamlines the process of analyzing astronomy data for researchers.
This redesign focuses on the Candidate page which allows the researcher to scan through a database of stars that appear on certain dates, as well as the Sources page which is where the researcher stores the scanned data into a table.
I was in charge of the redesign as lead designer of my team of 4 designers with the design timeline and initiating meetings with developers.
Efficiently scan your candidates
Keep track of your sources with ease
USER RESEARCH AND FINDINGS
Fritz’s UI didn’t consolidate information efficiently
My team distributed surveys to 34 Fritz users to identify which pages were most used.
We found that the Candidates and Sources page were visited daily by majority of users. However, users reported dissatisfaction with the pages due to ‘feeling slow’ or ‘being chaotic at times.’
My team then decided to evaluate these pages through a critique session.
We identified that Fritz’s main issue was inefficiently consolidating information which became our main focus for prototyping.
LO-FI
Creating the optimal candidates & sources experience
We developed lo-fi prototypes that focused on addressing unintuitive navigation and reduce scrolling to save time for researchers when they search for candidates and sources. We moved forward with this layout for the rest of our designs.
MID-FI
Altering colors to emphasize information better
We explored different color palettes to showcase to Fritz’s developers. These color palettes were to help researchers locate information better and emphasize key points.
FINAL DESIGN
An efficiently reorganized Skyportal
IMPACT
Redesigned Fritz shipped with positive user impact!
Our redesigns have been shipped onto Fritz! Another round of surveys were sent to users to share their thoughts about the redesign, reporting users heavily prefer Fritz’s new pages!
I really enjoyed this project because it allowed me to discuss different perspectives on how to make Fritz better as Fritz developers had a deeper understanding of the app and its background. These are some points of improvement I learned I could make as a designer.
My first time designing an experience alongside developers
REFLECTION
Clarify with the developers more
Showcasing ideas with the developers was great, but early on, I didn’t have a good understanding of the scope. This was on me to take initiative to ask questions earlier.
Use interviews to pinpoint possible user errors
While user surveys provided lots of key information, conducting interviews as well could’ve provided for a better idea of how Fritz was specifically used.