ANSYS Discovery - UX Manager

Ansys Discovery: UX Manager

As one of the industry leaders creating engineering simulation software, Ansys has a wide portfolio of products to offer customers across a large number of industries and sectors. While Ansys has always provided solutions to users with advanced engineering knowledge (i.e. users who have engineering PhDs), in recent years we have expanded our reach to users who aren’t as knowledgeable about the details of simulation, but who will greatly benefit by including simulation into their product development lifecycles.

We achieved this reach through several previous products, and in July 2020 we released Discovery (watch an introductory video on Discovery), the next generation product to combine interactive geometry modeling with simulation technology, allowing users to use simulation to validate early design ideas and concepts in near instantaneous time. As Discovery continues to mature, this product continues to provide industry leading geometry modeling and simulation tool for users who aren’t simulation experts while also supporting the modeling needs of simulation experts who primarily work with other Ansys products.

Since its launch, the Discovery product has received external and internal praise for the updated visual aesthetics, unique interactive paradigms, improved UI layouts and workflows, and the significant improvement in the overall user experience from its preceding software products. An important factor Discovery’s success (and its continued evolution) is how UX design practices have been incorporated into the software development process. Ansys isn’t a company that has employed a large number of UX professionals, so many developers and development managers aren’t accustomed to working closely with a UX professional to produce new features for an Ansys product. As the manager of the UX Team in our Design Business Unit, or DBU (the part of the company that created the Discovery product), I played significant role in meshing the work of my team all of the important stakeholders.

As the UX Team manager (a position I have been in officially since early 2018 and unofficially since the fall 2017) I have these responsibilities for the continued evolution of the Discovery product:

Understanding the planned features for the next release of Discovery that require the engagement of the UX Team
- The process includes advocating for the inclusion of new features/updates/improvements/etc to enhance the user experience of Discovery for the next release
- The outcome is a prioritized list of projects for the UX Team to work on that is realistic for the available team resources and the time to release
- The goal is for designs to be mature enough so development work can begin at the desired point in the release cycle
Distributing the project work among the designers and developers that I manage
- This includes prioritizing development resources on new feature development vs bug fixing
- Balancing the need for individuals with previous expertise in an area of the project to support the efforts with the need to spread the work across the team and allow more junior team members to gain experience
Communicating the progress of design and development work on my team to appropriate stakeholders
Presenting designs to senior leaders to collect feedback early on (before any development started) as part of the iterative design process

While my primary focus has been to manage the design efforts for the Discovery product, my scope has expanded. Due to the positive reception of the Discovery product, there has been a lot of internal interest from other teams to determine how they can evolve their products towards the standard that Discovery established. This interest has lead to support from senior and executive management for our team to create a consistent design paradigm for Ansys products moving forward. I am helping to achieve this goal in the following way:

Facilitating (and participating in) the effort to create a design language and design system for Ansys that will build off the foundation established by Discovery. This will allow products to adopt a level of consistency based on available resources and technical constraints/challenges.
Managing the work to create a UI Platform for web-based applications, that will create controls and widgets similar to the Desktop UI Platform that is used for the Discovery product.
Providing necessary assistance to a teams outside of the Discovery product who are already building new products on using the Desktop UI Platform of Discovery, to achieve a similar look and feel and interactivity.

As the manager of the UX Team, I also have the responsibility for growing our team through hiring new UX designers and front-end developers when we are approved new headcounts. We also hire interns, generally UX designers, to join our team for rotations throughout the year. I supervise and mentor our interns as they join our team, and encourage and work with interested full-time members of my team to assist me in the mentorship and supervision of our interns during the duration of their internships.

My main objective continues to be to manage and facilitate the design work and implementation for the Discovery product, but we are spreading our resources as appropriate to work towards these new efforts, which is bringing more attention to User Experience as a discipline, and the role my team and other UX professionals can play in the process to build successful software products at Ansys.