Capstone
GeoEye Analytics (acquired by DigitalGlobe, now Maxar Technologies) wanted a unifying user experience architecture and design system for their geospatial cloud analytics suite of applications. Chief among them was a C4ISR project called "Capstone."
CHALLENGE
Develop a single UX/UI design to unify a suite of geospatial cloud analytics applications.
CONDITIONS
The product concept must meet the specific C4ISR requirements of the customer and undergo extensive usability testing before additional funding could be released for further development.
Capstone v.2.1 ©GeoEye. (Click image to expand.)
Creating
Platform Tools
Capstone requirements for a real-time global image mosaic included a fully updated imagery collection integrating multiple sources, GeoEye, LandSat, MODIS, Spot, and RapidEye. Plus, it had to provide fast visualization of the latest views, scenes, and data.
The platform needed to also show the evolution of data through time — the movement of trackable resources, estimate best paths of travel, condense billions of observations into a single temporal summary map.
The user would have toe ability to update the platform to forecast future activity from past observations and automatically learn a model of past behavior to calculate and project that into the future for a more simple map view that prioritizes new ‘high likelihood’ areas.
Early Capstone builds from R&D..
The New
Capstone UX/UI
OPPORTUNITY
Provide a simple interface for a platform of complex applications.
METHOD
Use icons to explain the affordance of each application, open/close drawers for each application, and display the map/location in the background with a quick toolbar for editing in real-time. The default is dark mode to reduce the user’s profile in dark environments.
RESULT
A cleaner interface that can quickly respond to the user while presenting operational awareness. Compared to the previous build, users completed 3x as many tasks 200% faster on average with increased accuracy.
The initial "styleboard" for the new Capstone UI.
The new "diamond" cursor and application icons.
The new quick reference toolbar.
Nic came through for us on a very important project and brought his design eye and skills at UI/UX to bear designing a terrific user experience for us.
— Jason Dalton, Sr. Director, Applied Technology, GeoEye
“
Scalability
When fully tested and deployed, the platform will be able to act as a central hub for teams regardless of their operating proximity. A closed/secure mobile application will keep communication constant with necessary information and allow for flexibility without compromising readiness.
Another advantage of the platform is that the UX/UI can be repurposed for additional operational management needs that require location-based, geospatial data-driven solutions. Below is a conceptual example of the platform tested with GeoEye's OrbMap software serving global maritime industries.
