Role:
‍UX Architect
Team:
IX/VX Designer
ID Designer
Strategy Partners:
Product Management
M&A
Business Analyst

HP MetalJet

UX strategy & research program.
How HP Inc. is going to tackle the metal additive manufacturing market.

Problem

As the next step in additive manufacturing dominance, HP Inc. entered the metals market. The metals manufacturing segment is much larger and more valuable than the additive plastics market.
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The challenge: how to position HP MetalJet within the existing market space and what supporting experiences are needed digitally & physically to get our customers to:

- Get setup efficiently
- Utilize the equipment at scale
- Produce high quality end parts

Solution

A suite of stand alone, but linked software products to reduce friction throughout the process from empty facility to finished goods coming off of HP Equipment.
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Software Suite:
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- Capital Equipment Purchase Support
- Design for MetalJet Manufacturing (DFM)
- 3D Build Preparation
- Factory Management
- Factory Automation
- Quality Management System & Part Certification

Background & Goals

HP Inc. wanted to understand where they fit within the broader metals market in general as well as the metals additive manufacturing market. It was known at the start of the program the TAM of the current additive metals space was not sufficient for company expectations.

Goals:
What is the best segment to attack first to gain traction?
What are the experience assets needed to enter that market segment?
Does HP Inc. build or buy those assets?

Metals market segmentation

Discovery & Research

We started with remote secondary research of metals manufacturing, followed by visits to HP Inc's material labs to try & understand our new internal technology processes. Then we conducted a series of site visits to existing metals manufacturers to get a baseline comparison with conventional methods. This included travel in the USA along with visits across parts of Europe to get primary sources.

In parallel, we also established Alpha Partners early on where we placed competitors technology alongside HP prototypes to get longitudinal information & documentation for future analysis.

Ethnography & initial research

Discovery Findings

HP's powder based technology is a differentiator in comparison to other additive processes, by allowing user to fill the entire build volume.
Conventional metals methods' & additive competitors' user journeys are much simpler and have fewer steps.
HP's process has a very long timeline.
The existing conventional metals manufacturers are resistant to change.
The highest value metals market segments are also the most regulated.
Automation dependency is based on geographic location & local labor price.

Workshopping

After the discovery phase was completed, we held two workshops:
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1.
With the business partner team to break down & highlight the user journeys of each competitive technology & what experience assets they are using.
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2.
A remote design sprint within the design team to explore the very time consuming Build Preparation process using existing software. We built a paper prototype & a clickable wireframe to showcase the design direction.

Metals manufacturing journeys

First design sprint - Paper prototypes

Initial system & screens

Summit & Showcase 1

After the workshops, the broader business held a summit to go through the findings & get a state of the state from all department heads. I represented Design & highlighted the experience gaps in the current user journey & demoed the prototypes to showcase where the team was at that moment.

The result of the summit was a competition to see if HP Inc. would build or buy assets to solve the software gaps.

Build / Buy = Research

As part of the Build vs. Buy decision making, we broke out the end-to-end journey into section & tagged each section with the appropriate method.

One of the main sections to buy were the factory automation steps. This is an existing market with a lot of readily available solutions. We researched out to several potential vendors as well as traveled to an automation trade show to do initial vetting.

Partner vendors were down-selected in strategic manner:‍
- Web research & filtering based on requirements
- Phone / Video call to discuss NDAs & contracts
- Emailed initial brief
- Meet & greet at trade show if possible
- HP held in person capabilities demo & proposal

Automation & secondary competition visits

Summit & Showcase 2

We built out a complete 1:1 mockup of the proposed hardware system & prototypes of all the associated software components to run the business group through an entire MetalJet process. At HP we call these events a User Experience Review.

This event was the final element of the strategy program to help guide & ensure goal were being met in addition to highlighting risks & gaps.

Impact

HP Inc. is using this body of work to decide how to complete the user & customer journey.
Results concluded in a solid Build & Buy plan along with why for each process.
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HP Inc.'s MetalJet Software Suite:
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- Capital Equipment Purchase Support = Build
- Design for MetalJet Manufacturing (DFM) = Build
- 3D Build Preparation = Partner
- Factory Management = Aquire
- Factory Automation = Buy
- Quality Management System & Part Certification = Build

This plan was completed in 2019 & set the direction for the entire Metals Additive Organization. HP Inc. still in the process of implementing.