WellWise: Well Cost Estimator
The WellWise Well Cost Estimator is an internal web-based product that allows drilling and cost engineers to accurately and efficiently create cost and time estimates, monitor in-progress jobs, and access historical reports.
Complexity on Complexity
The intricacy of the industry, the sheer magnitude of the client’s business, multiple data sources, and the flexibility of features and functionality required impeccable attention to detail.
The Ask
Assortment of tools used to create cost estimates
Drilling and Cost Engineers are required to create detailed estimates before the organization will provide an approval for expenditure for all new drilling and subsurface jobs. ExxonMobil engaged Fjord Design Studios to analyze the current process to develop a product that allows users to make use of historical data, tribal knowledge, and changing landscapes to create accurate estimates that optimize investments by balancing risk to maximize performance.
In addition to the estimate process, we were asked to address monitoring and reporting of job performance in real-time. Our goal was to encourage data standardization and to create clean historical references that provided organization-wide budget and performance transparency.
My Role
Content Model
As the Sr. Content Designer/UX Designer, my responsibilities included:
Spearheading stakeholder interviews.
Synthesizing research findings.
Conducting product and content audits.
Developing user archetypes and corresponding journeys.
Collaborating with teammates to establish design pillars.
Creating detailed content models
Creating user flows and wireframes.
Defining the preliminary application map and product roadmap.
Contributing to, and maintaining, the product style guide.
Discovering the Problems
Tool and artifact analysis
Through exhaustive user interviews and in-depth analysis of processes and tools, the team developed an understanding of the problems we’d need to solve for, including:
A patchwork of disparate and overlapping tools creating significant workflow inefficiencies.
Manual processes and time-consuming tasks that took engineers away from organizational improvement and high value activities.
Knowledge and experience that was not effectively transferred in the current process, with creativity and ingenuity being misplaced on the creation of ad-hoc tools to meet needs.
Delivery of cost estimates took a disproportionate amount of time and effort; effort that could be better spent addressing other, value-add, bottom line impacting activities.
Getting to Delivery
With the problems well defined and an eye toward simplification and efficiency, the real product design work started. Deliverables and activities included:
Weekly collaborative work sessions: Keeping the client involved was key to success. Avoiding a “big reveal” facilitated a mutually beneficial design partnership that made both parties push the understanding and intention of the product.
Content Models: By defining content blocks and defining attributes, moving into wires and conceptual sketches was a far more efficient.
Wireframes: By first developing content models that included all key information in a modular format, moving to hand-drawn and lo-fidelity wireframes was efficient and effective.
Visual direction & mood boards: Existing organizational colors and styles, and outcomes from mood boarding exercises to establish product identity.
Conceptual product sketches: Using wireframes and visual identity as a foundation, key screens were created to provide a real-world feel to how the product would look and feel upon completion.
Data analysis & modeling: In order to create a working product, data needed to be shaped correctly so that the product could incorporate historical data and write to existing data bases to ensure future data hygiene.
Internal critiques & refinement: To guard against designing in a bubble, bi-weekly studio critiques led to useful product refinements before putting the product in front of users.
User validation: A product is only useful if it improves the ultimate goal of the user. Early prototypes were tested with real users and feedback was used to make any necessary changes.
The Ask: Part 2
Proof of concept 2
After completing the discovery portion of the project, the client decided to continue their engagement with Fjord to include the development and delivery of the product to be used by all drilling and subsurface employees moving forward. Building on the strong foundation built during the initial design phase, a full backend and frontend development team was brought on board to complete the project.
Using the agile methodology, the design team started work two sprints ahead of development to guarantee project efficiency. During initial sprints, the development team immersed themselves in the work done in the initial phase to better grasp the complexity of the project.
My Role: Part 2
User interaction annotations
Continuing as the Sr. Content Designer/UX Designer, my role shifted and I became the studio subject matter expert and product owner, serving as the conduit between design and development teams. Responsibilities in this position included:
Developing high fidelity wires used to guide developers during the build process.
Annotating wires to communicate the intended functionality of the product.
Writing user stories and acceptance criteria for the development team.
Providing fully fleshed out data models to guide the backend team as they built out endpoints.
Working with the design team to create a style guide to be used by Fjord and delivered to the client for product maintenance and future enhancements.
Creating content for first time user tutorials.
The Goal
Well section selector
Well overview
To reduce administrative tasks and increase efficiencies across the organization, the product fostered:
Democratization of data: Users base estimates and designs on previous job information, historically stranded on desktops. We provided access to information for over 18,000 historical jobs, sortable by country, date, and other defining attributes.
Rapid creation & iteration: A streamlined workflow allows for the rapid creation of speculated designs and iterations of alternate solutions. Drag and drop functionality, duplication capabilities, and manual adjustments let the user have complete control of their estimate
Job comparison: Flexibility to compare different designs in a single view allows engineers and their peers to evaluate the potential ROI for each job.
Progressive reporting: Providing quantitative and qualitative information throughout the life of the job in a centralized platform simplifies not only the daily reporting process, but end of job reporting as well.
The Results
Dark version of WellWise
First time user tutorial
By keeping communication open, and consistently pushing innovative design thinking, the final product has the potential to make a big impact throughout the organization, including:
Culture shift: By focusing on transparency and knowledge sharing, communication barriers are broken and all employees have insight into historical and real-time performance data to better inform decision making.
Investment optimization: Because of risk adverse budgeting, millions of dollars were wrapped up for the entirety of a fiscal year. creating estimates using real performance data could free up nearly $500M for other investments.
Employee efficiency: Drilling engineer cost estimating workload is reduced at the equivalent of 5-10 FTEs, allowing focus on high value activities.
Streamlining technology: Replaces 10 individual tools/DBs currently in use, provides a single touchpoint for data access, and utilizes existing cloud infrastructure to decrease cost and increase speed.
Data hygiene: Defining company-wide standards improve efficiency and impact of historical data.
“This is exactly what everyone’s been wanting; I will definitely use this.”
Josh Precluda, Drilling Engineer