Crafting controls as teaching tools
In initial discussions with stakeholders at Quantifi Photonics, it became clear that the “Cohesion UI” software tools would frequently be skipped over by many users in favor of automation-friendly code scripts.
However, this provided a unique avenue to focus on the needs of smaller user groups. In the case of the POL software it quickly became clear that signal polarization was a concept that was hard to grasp for inexperienced users. It was a perfect opportunity to design a set of controls that would double as a visual teaching aid for what the various values referred to.
The UI for manual polarization
Control brainstorms (left) and the Poincaré sphere (right)
To improve learnability, brainstorming for these controls revolved around creating something that both resembled real-world physical counterparts (as their functionality would be readable and recognisable to most users) and that would also represent the diagrammatical representation of polarization (a Poincaré sphere).
Additionally:
Skeuomorphic controls entice interaction, so users would be drawn to play and experiment with these - facilitating learning
Visually attractive controls have been proven to be less frustrating to interact with when working in an unknown environment
Competitors relied purely on a numerical interface or automation scripts so we had freedom to experiment without an established, expected control interface.
With my rudimentary, third-hand knowledge of these complex subjects, brainstorming was done alongside SMEs and stakeholders in order to ensure nothing strayed too far from expectations.
It took many iterations and several workshops to get these controls feeling right for our users and stakeholders. It turned out that there were aspects that depended on how or where you learned polarization principles so there was a lot of debate around labels, units and how best to represent aspects.
Though the final design lost a lot of the skeuomorphism of early iterations, their presence is still felt in the shapes and layout of the controls.
The design was considered a success as users appreciated the ability to see their polarization adjustments represented in the controls and mirrored in the neighboring diagram.
Poincaré sphere and finalized controls for manual polarization