nTopology is a new generation of 3D modeling software that’s highly performant at generating and rendering intricate details.

Many industrial manufacturing companies use nTopology (instead of traditional CAD) to iterate on designs that involve intricate geometries and suitable for advanced manufacturing (such as 3D printing).

To validate initial assumptions, I designed a survey for nTopology's internal users, with an emphasis on people who are in customer-facing roles.

The survey responses helped provide an overview of usage of inspection tools by persona, workflows, and level of experience.

After initial round of assumption validation and feedback gathering, I then talked to people from each of the 4 main user groups, observed their usage of nTopology in action, and gathered more qualitative feedback.

I sat down with internal users in either individual or group meetings, depending on each person's schedules, and I gathered feedback from nTopology's clients by riding along existing weekly or biweekly product support meetings they have with nTopology.

Analyze and synthesize learnings from user research:

I engaged the entire graphics engineering team to discuss rendering capabilities, and I designed a Miro board template to facilitate and keep track of the inputs from engineers.

For each major iteration of my design, I made sure to share the design directions with the customer success team, graphics engineering team, and product design team to gather feedback on usability and feasibility.

This way, I was able to narrow down the design direction before creating hi-fidelity spec.

Iterate designs through wireframes, 2D UI design and 3D interactive prototypes:

The final design consists of contextual 2D Toolbars that allow user to quickly make modifications to their inspection setup on the fly, and more accessible 3D and keyboard inputs.

Field Viewer Toolbar

Section Cut Toolbar

Intuitive and continuous experience for switching states

Top improve mouse interactions for transforming view planes, I built a 3D prototype and specified the rendering setup for the improved Gimbal, and hosted the 3D specs on the following website to share easily with PMs and Engineers.