NASA

Overview

Problem

To successfully reach Mars, astronauts will need greater autonomy when handling anomalies, as communication delays hinder Mission Control's ability to provide immediate support. NASA requires anomaly simulations to understand human performance in these high-risk scenarios.

During future missions to Mars, astronauts will have to endure an up-to 40 minute round-trip communication delay with mission control. If a problem were to occur, astronauts are by themselves. Astronauts will have to respond and solve anomalies indepdently in space.

Current Challenge

One of the ways NASA researchers are trying to address this communication delay challenge is by simulating key qualities of anomalies. The goal is to understand how astronauts react without external help like mission control, which would allow the researchers to develop better tools to improve astronaut survivability, for when they do eventually go to mars missions.

Unfortunately, NASA researchers are lacking abstract simulations that can truly provide astronauts a challenge that isn't related to user experience (remember this for later).

The Goal

Our goal was to provide NASA researchers a simulation tool that allows them to assess crew performance in the presence of anomalies in spaceflight.

My Team & My Contribution

My team composed of me, a Product Designer, a Product Manager, another Product Designer, a User Researcher, and a Software Engineer.

Ultimately my team and I shipped two products, but in this case study, I'll focus on the product I owned and led.

My Role

Product Designer

Timeline

7 Months (Jan. 2024 - Jul. 2024)

Client

NASA Ames Research Center - HSI Division

Solution

Sneak Peak to Solution

Research

Expert Interviews

In order to create simulation of the qualities of anomalies, we first need to know what an anomaly is and study previous anomalies that resulted in disasters like the Columbia incident. So, my UX Researcher and I performed 10 rounds of interviews with different NASA researchers who we were our primary end users. The goal of the interviews were to uncover more information about the current processes and the approach to creating simulations of anomalies, as well as understanding more about anomalies.

Interview with a NASA researcher, discussing the importance of creative problem solving

User Journey Maps

As we gained more information from interviews, I created user journeys maps for each of our interviewee and I tried to find some parallel in terms of each of their painpoints.

3 of 10 user journey maps

Insights

The most important insights gained from the user journeys were:

Lastly, a quote from a NASA researcher that really shocked us but also provided a clear pain point with previous simulation was:

In previous simulations, the issues astronauts encountered weren't with responding to the anomalies themselves, but with the interface and user flow of the simulations—problems that distracted from the researchers' actual goals. So moving forward, I made sure the other designer, as well as myself, prioritized creating a 'perfect UX' from the ground up, making sure the simulation or rather the tasks inside the simulation were the pieces that were actually challenging rather than the usability of the simulation.

Ideation & Validation

Ideation

My co-designer and I designed various anomaly scenarios, from something conventional like a flight simulator malfunction requiring astronaut intervention, to more creative challenges like a robot war, where astronauts must repair a damaged robot between rounds to keep it operational. While we generated several strong concepts, we needed a way to validate and refine them.

All the different ideas my co-designer and I created

Early Validation

The way we consolidated our ideas was by conducting early validation testing with our primary end users, nasa researchers. I specifically vouched for this approach to the other designer and researcher, because of the limited time we had with the project as well as the nature of the our end goal which was a complex and a logistical simulation. So, we had to make sure from early on that the direction we'd be going towards was not a waste of time or money.

An early concept of a web-based simulation that was tested with NASA researchers

The goal of these validation testing sessions was to answer four key questions:

Early Validation Questions	Answers Received
Does it have a complex system?	Yes, and the system can scale.
Does it have “perfect UX”?	Not yet but it will.
Will it be portable?	Yes.
Will it be expensive to develop?	No.

Once both the researcher, the other product designer, and I were satisfied with these answers, we narrowed our focus to 1-2 ideas that we decided to move forward with.

Design - Robo Run

What is Robo Run

Robo Run is an abstract anomaly simulation designed for 3-4 astronauts, depending on the chosen difficulty. The team is split into two roles: navigator and engineer. The objective is to move a small cube on the left side of the screen as far as possible while managing backend system issues displayed on the two right screens. With numerous mechanics involved, this simulation demands creative problem-solving to progress further and succeed.

Design Process

Below, are snapshots of some of the work that I did and went into designing robo-run.

Redesigned storage page after user testing

Redesigned inventory section after user testing

Snapshhot of designing the screens

Designing a new task inside robo-run

Design System, Scaling Designs

Looking ahead, I knew that this simulation will become increasingly complex as NASA researchers adapts it to match astronauts' skills. This means that certain mechanics might get removed or added depending on future requirements. In order to support this products growth, I created a large and up-to-date design system in figma in order to support the scalability of this product.

At the same time, I added detailed guidelines to these components so that future designers could easily understand how to design for the interface. This included specifying things like the spacing between data bars, the meaning of error states, and more. Knowing that this system would scale over time, it was essential that our designs were built with scalability in mind, and I ensured that with a detailed design system.

Snapshot of design system and guidelines.

Highlight Reel

Impact & Outcome

Impact of Robo Run

One of the biggest goals of NASA researchers was to have a complex simulation that also had "perfect UX". With my amazing teammates, we were able to create a simulation that had "perfect UX", meaning astronauts did not get challenged by the user-interface/user experience but were challenged with the system and mechanics of the simulation, something NASA researchers were deperately lacking.

The following quote is from the same researcher who initially emphasized the need for a complex system and flawless UX for NASA's next simulation, after seeing the final product of Robo Run:

Outcome

There were a lot of great outcomes from Robo Run and some of the notable ones were:

Created the first "perfect ux" simulation at NASA that is currently being used.

Reduced task-error rates with simulations by 19% with robo-run.

Robo-Run simulation was awarded $200k+ in funding to be used for testing with astronauts.

Saved NASA researchers 13 months and more than $500k+ in developmental costs by creating Robo Run.

Reflection

This project was an incredible journey, spanning seven months.I'd like to take a moment to express my gratitude to those who made this project possible—my managers at Ames, Katie McTigue and Katelyn Duncan! I learned so much about team management, the user-experience journey, ANOMALIES and solving a problem that's quite literally out of this planet.

Of course we can't forget my awesome team members! Thank you all for being amazing!