This project aimed to provide incident and roadwork detection, logging, and response services to the country's national traffic control centres (TOCs). This initiative, impacting every road user in the country, proved to be the most rewarding undertaking of my career.
The Problems
Diverse Regional Procedures: Four traffic operation centres in New Zealand operated with varying incident management systems and distinct regional operational procedures.
Data Entry Duplication: Traffic Control Operators juggled at least three applications simultaneously, each serving different purposes for informing the public, internal stakeholders, and road contractors.
Project Goal
Unified National Solution: Develop a unified national solution that respects the unique operational processes of each centre.
Integration for Efficiency: Integrate with other systems to reduce manual work for operators.
Efficient Incident and Roadwork Management: Create an efficient incident and roadwork management system to shorten the incident life cycle and minimise the impact on road users.
My Role
User Research
Solution Design
UX/UI Design
Cross-functional initiatives
My Process
As the sole UX designer, I took on multiple roles, collaborating closely with the two primary traffic control centres in Northland and the delivery team.
What sets my approach apart is the integration of lean UX methodology. This fosters collaboration by working with cross-functional teams throughout the product lifecycle. I actively contribute to requirements gathering and user stories, refining stories with the development team, and monitoring projects to ensure feasibility and usability within the project scope. At the New Zealand Transport Agency, I have earned a reputation as a versatile professional adept at bridging the roles of a business analyst and product manager.
Project Notes
Our journey began in early 2018 with research, followed by our first release in early 2019, successfully launched in Wellington Traffic Control Centre. From 2019 to 2020, we focused on releasing the Incident KPI for real-time incident performance measurement and designing a tunnel incident management system.
Results
Impact on Incident and Roadwork Management: the development of NEIMS (an incident and roadwork event management system) has substantially improved the response speed
of New Zealand transport operators. This innovative system has successfully alleviated time pressures in resolving road incidents.Smooth Transition to New Software: Provided instrumental support for the seamless transition of the regional transport operation centre to the new software, ensuring a smooth adaptation process and minimizing disruptions.
Co-Creation of Incident KPI System: We collaborated on designing and implementing an incident Key Performance Indicator (KPI) system to track real-time incident insights. This system has proven invaluable in enhancing decision-making processes and optimizing incident management strategies.
User & Use Case Mapping
Live Mapping Incidents and Roadwork
Release Celebration
Incidents KPI Workshop
Incident Journey Mapping
Incident KPI Dashboard
“It works better than TREIS and ILS (the applications transport operators used at the time) and is more reliable and consistent.”
WTOC Operator
“This is so much quicker to use and enter information into… great ongoing development, and great that our feedback results in improvements.”
WTOC Operator
“Using the system is very straightforward; it was so easy to learn and understand how to use it.”
TOC Operator
Working with Ariel at NZTA has been a career highlight for me. She is both professional through and through, and also absolutely delightful to work with. With a wide and varied background of experience to draw upon, Ariel brings BA, UX research and UI design to the table in such a solution-focussed way, everything just seems easy. She is structured, logical and user-focussed, and she's also practical from a development and business perspective. I have no hesitation in saying that if you get the chance to work with her, you should.
Sean Higham
Senior Product Manager