Tag: design

• You Forgot What It’s Like to Actually Do the Work (If You Ever Even Did It)

  I’ve watched more “digital transformation initiatives” crash and burn than I care to count. You know what the common thread is? Empathy. Nobody building these systems has changed a bearing at 2 AM in six months. Nobody’s climbed a scaffold with a tablet. Nobody’s tried to log into three different systems while wearing gloves in February.

  We’ve turned digitalization into a compliance exercise. Check the box, get the budget approved, roll it out, call it a win. Then we act surprised when adoption is 12% and the front line is still using paper.

  The Empathy Gap

  Here’s what I mean by empathy – and I’m not talking about cotton candy culture crap. I’m talking about tactical, practical empathy. The kind that actually helps you build something people will use.

  Try this: Go do home renovations without your phone for a day.

  You’ll immediately notice what’s missing. You can’t quickly measure that weird corner to see if you need to make another trip to the hardware store. You can’t pull up that YouTube video showing you the specific way to cut crown molding for an inside corner. You can’t text your partner to say you’ll be late because the drywall delivery got delayed.

  That feeling? That’s your operators. Every single day.

  We’re Asking People to Work with One Hand Tied Behind Their Back

  The irony kills me. We go home and we’ve got smart thermostats, we’re ordering groceries from our couch, we’re watching YouTube tutorials to fix our dishwashers. Then we come to work and ask people to navigate systems that would’ve felt dated in 2010.

  Your maintenance tech can probably rebuild an engine in their sleep, but you’re asking them to log in through three different portals just to report that a pump is making a weird noise. Your operators are running complex processes worth millions of dollars, but they’re writing notes on paper because the digital work order system takes seventeen clicks to do what should take two.

  What Real Empathy Looks Like

  Real empathy isn’t a focus group where you ask people what they want and then ignore it because it doesn’t fit your roadmap. It’s simpler than that:

  Spend a shift doing the actual work with the tools you’re building. Not watching. Doing.

  Try to complete a work order on that new mobile app while you’re wearing the same PPE your team wears. See how many taps it takes. See if you can read that screen in direct sunlight. Notice whether you can actually do it with gloves on, or if you have to take them off every single time.

  Walk the route your operators walk. Are you asking them to go back to the control room to log something that happened in the field? Why? You wouldn’t accept that in your own life.

  Try to find a procedure in your document management system. Time yourself. Ask yourself if you’d bother, or if you’d just ask the guy who’s been here for 20 years instead.

  Think about the last time you forgot your phone at home. Remember that moment of panic? That reach for your pocket and the sinking feeling when it wasn’t there? That’s the gap between what your workers need and what you’re giving them.

  Building Empathy Takes Practice

  This isn’t a one-time thing. You can’t shadow someone for an afternoon and check the empathy box.

  The next time you’re at home and you pull out your phone to look something up, pause. Think about what you just avoided – a trip to the library? Calling someone? Guessing? Now think about your operators not having that option.

  When you’re measuring something and you use your phone’s measuring app, think about your millwright who has to walk back to get a tape measure.

  When you quickly text someone an update, think about your operator filling out a paper log that someone will manually enter later.

  These moments build real empathy. The kind that makes you ask different questions and push back when someone suggests a solution that looks good on paper but will be terrible in practice.

  The Bottom Line

  Your program isn’t failing because people are resistant to change. It’s failing because it was designed for steering committee meetings, not for troubleshooting a compressor trip at 11 PM.

  Make it a habit to notice the gaps between what you expect in your own life and what you’re asking of your workforce. Go spend time on the floor with your own tools. Pay attention to the friction. Notice when you reach for your phone and what that solves. Then ask if your workers have that same capability.

  If you’re not willing to do that, don’t be surprised when everyone keeps using the old ways. At least those let them get work done.

  October 10, 2025

  design, empathy, leadership, relationships, ux

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• Your Field Software is Failing Your People (And It’s Time to Admit It)

  I’m literally writing this while sitting at an operating site, watching good people try to make sense of a digital tool that was clearly designed by someone who’s never actually done the job. The usual suspects – clunky interfaces, wrong workflows, and that special kind of frustration that comes from knowing your users will forget everything you just taught them the second you leave.

  And you know what? I’m over it. Done. I am fed up with software that doesn’t just work for my field workers, and with wasting time trying to make it work with them. I’m tired of dealing with arrogant vendors that take six months for a minor product change.

  The Beautiful Simplicity of Things That Just Work

  The thing about great design – you don’t notice it. It just makes sense. Like the first time you used an iPhone – nobody handed you a manual. You just picked it up and started using it because it worked the way your brain expected it to work.

  That’s what industrial software should be like. When someone’s managing critical infrastructure, operating heavy equipment, or dealing with emergency situations, the last thing on their mind is figuring out how to use the digital tool. As a result of the nature of the industrial end user – they’re too busy making real decisions to screw around with a user interface that’s not intuitive. If paper is easier, they will use paper.

  The Real Cost of Garbage UX

  When we accept crappy user experiences as “just how it is” in industrial settings, it has real consequences. And we’ve been doing this for years because we’ve been handcuffed to a few flagship products in the industrial market.

  First, your people spend half their day wrestling with technology instead of doing actual work. That’s time stolen from productive work.

  Then there’s the training nightmare. You roll out a new digital tool, spend weeks training everyone, feel good about adoption, then come back six months later to find people have invented different workarounds to avoid using the tool. Why? Because the tool sucks.

  But here’s what really gets me fired up – the safety implications. When people are frustrated with their tools, when they develop sketchy workarounds to avoid using proper systems, that’s when accidents happen. Poor UX isn’t just annoying; it’s dangerous.

  Why It Hurts My Soul

  I’m currently sitting here watching these guys – good, seasoned operators – struggle with software that should be making work easier. And I can see it in their faces. They’re being polite, they’re trying to learn, but I know I’ve failed them. Because the software fights them every step of the way, and frankly, paper does a better job than what I’m giving them. I’m enabling bad design and trying so hard to make it work, but this crap has to stop. The timing is ripe for better products with the new technology that’s coming out.

  What Good Looks Like (When We Bother to Do It Right)

  Good field software understands context. It knows you only need three big buttons to do three tasks on the app in the field. It knows you might be wearing gloves, so buttons are big enough to hit. It knows connectivity might be spotty, so it fails gracefully and syncs when it can. It follows patterns people already understand.

  It assumes intelligence, not ignorance. Field workers are experts at their jobs. The digital tool should leverage that expertise. It is imperative that digital tools are developed with the end user.

  Most importantly, it gets out of the way. The best field tools are invisible – they help people do their jobs better without making them think about the software itself.

  Time to Advocate for the Field Worker

  My radical proposal – let’s stop accepting garbage. When vendors pitch you their “revolutionary” solution, ask them one question: “How did you build this product?” If their answer doesn’t include front-line workers, walk away. If they start talking about web-based training – run.

  When you’re evaluating tech, don’t look at feature lists. Put it in front of actual users without any training or direction. If people struggle – that’s your answer right there.

  Involve actual field workers in the design process. Not at the end as beta testers, but from the beginning as partners. They know things about their work that no amount of requirements gathering will capture.

  What’s Next

  Field workers deserve digital tools that respect their intelligence, understand their environment, and help them do their jobs better. They don’t deserve to be guinea pigs for half-baked interfaces designed by people who’ve never set foot on a job site.

  Good UX isn’t about making things pretty (though that doesn’t hurt). It’s about making things work. It’s about respecting people’s time, expertise, and safety.

  And until we demand better – until we stop accepting “that’s just how field software is” – we’re going to keep having the same conversations, the same training sessions, and the same frustrations.

  Time to raise the bar. Our field workers deserve it, our operations need it, and honestly, those of us supporting these systems are tired of apologizing for other people’s design failures.

  Let’s build software that doesn’t suck. It’s not that hard – we just have to have the humility to realize we don’t know everything on our own.

  September 18, 2025

  ai, design, ux

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