FieldSight 2.0 · 2017 · Apex Energy × TechSolve
A design-thinking led UX redefinition of Apex Energy's upstream production platform — turning slow, siloed, tribal workflows into a role-based, advisory-driven surface built to help Apex Energy capture 25% of the upstream market share by 2020.
Role
UX Lead — TechSolve
Client
Apex Energy
Scope
Discover → Design
Year
2017
Problem
Production engineers juggled unreliable data, disconnected admin modules and non-scalable workflows — losing hours a day to context switching between charts, cases and spreadsheets.
Approach
A design-thinking led ‘Discover & Design’ engagement — 4 weeks of market research, 17 user interviews, 10+ focus groups, 6 journey maps, iterative wireframing.
Outcome
A modular, role-based FieldSight 2.0 concept — customisable dashboards, advisory-driven workflows, unified admin, faceted search and a shared collaboration fabric across five personas.
FieldSight is Apex Energy's production optimisation platform for upstream operators. The 2.0 redefinition — delivered in partnership with TechSolve — was not an application facelift. It was a redesign of the business model itself: the surface that would move Apex Energy from an equipment provider to a digital business solution provider, and open the path to a $1B / 25% upstream market share ambition by 2020.
The Vision
Empower customers to make informed decisions, faster — every screen answers ‘what should I do next?’ not just ‘what happened?’
Real-time production well visibility — status, alerts, advisories and history collapsed into one place, not four.
Move Apex Energy from equipment provider to business-solution provider — the software becomes the differentiator, not the hardware.
Process
A structured Discover → Design cadence, grounded in User-Centred Design methods, made every downstream decision defensible.
Phase 01
Understand the landscape, the people and the pain — before drawing a single screen.
Phase 02
Translate discovery into a coherent, testable, scalable experience.
17
User interviews
10+
Focus groups
7
Personas
6
Journey maps
70
Hi-fi screens
~70h
Interview transcript
Problem Statements & How We Overcame Them
The interview transcripts distilled into six recurring blockers — each one traceable to a design move in FieldSight 2.0.
Data shown by the system feels unreliable — engineers cross-check every chart before they trust it
How we overcame it: Every card carries provenance: source, timestamp, sensor and last sync. Dynacards, welllogs and reports share one lineage model so trust is built, not bolted on.
The product doesn't scale — new workflows and vendors need a release cycle to fit
How we overcame it: A modular card/widget architecture lets new workflows compose from existing primitives. Vendor-agnostic connectors sit behind the same UI shell.
Admin modules are disconnected — switching between them is painful and error-prone
How we overcame it: One unified Administration surface for sites, users, devices, roles and subsidiaries. One login, one session, one navigation model.
Global search is weak — users cannot reliably find files, cases, advisories or topics
How we overcame it: Customisable faceted search across wells, cases, tasks, files, advisories and topics — with saveable shortcuts for each role.
Workspaces are rigid — every persona is forced into the same layout
How we overcame it: Role-based, user-configurable dashboards. Add, remove and reorder cards. The layout learns from the user, not the other way around.
Collaboration lives outside the tool — decisions happen in email and team chat, not in FieldSight
How we overcame it: First-class conversations, notifications and shared artifacts on every case, well and advisory — no more parallel-universe email threads.
Who we designed for
Roles overlap in the field. Titles blur under cost pressure and multi-tasking. The IA had to accommodate that ambiguity without forcing anyone into a wrong role.
Owns field production targets. Reviews dashboards from office and home. Rarely dives into individual well diagnostics.
Needs
Office-based bulk lifter. Dual-monitor setup. Handles wells, flowlines, artificial lift — monitors, diagnoses, prognoses.
Needs
Apex Energy-side counterpart to the production engineer. Brings equipment knowledge and cross-customer patterns.
Needs
Software-issue owner. Needs collaboration tools — chat, screen sharing — to reproduce and resolve customer problems fast.
Needs
Visits well sites daily. Laptop in truck or iPad. Gloves on. Intermittent connectivity. Needs data on demand.
Needs
Deep well-behaviour expertise. Reads dynacards, well logs and charts to spot optimisation potential across the fleet.
Needs
Research findings
Pain-points that would otherwise stay buried under org charts and release notes. Every quote below re-scoped a feature.
Trust
Engineers double-checked every chart against raw SCADA before believing it — a silent tax on every workflow.
Scale
New workflows and vendors could not be accommodated without a release cycle. Scalability was a UX problem, not just an engineering one.
Speed
Data communication latency and page loads broke concentration, especially during weekly production reviews.
Analytics
Existing analytics didn't answer the actual questions engineers had — dynacards, welllogs and reports lived in silos.
Setup
Onboarding a new customer or well took weeks. Admin modules were scattered and inconsistent.
Search
Global search barely returned results across cases, files, advisories and conversations. Faceted search was the single biggest ask.
Journey maps
The scenarios ranged from Monday-morning reviews to P1 emergencies. Each was mapped end-to-end with the personas, tools and touchpoints involved — and then compared to find the shared UX primitives.
Scenario
Production Manager, Engineer and Field Operator triangulate expected vs. actual STB/D across wells — dashboards, cases, tasks, mobile.
Scenario
From diagnostic-engineer alert to field fix to helpdesk case — a five-step collaboration flow across every persona.
Scenario
A production engineer stitches My Vault, advisories, charts and knowledgebase into an executable plan.
Scenario
High-priority advisory triggers a collaboration or escalation path — every touchpoint traced and time-stamped.
Scenario
Diagnostic engineer works dynacards + welllogs to confirm root cause before creating tasks.
Scenario
An advisory suggests a change; the plan is validated across manager, engineer and field before any well is touched.
Design tenets
Every wireframe, interaction and copy line was scored against these five tenets. If a screen failed any of them, it went back to the board.
Same UI elements, same tone of voice, same interaction rules — everywhere.
Role-based, resolution-aware, offline-capable. The surface bends to the user, not the other way around.
Gloves-on field use, low-connectivity truck cabs, dashboards seen from across the room.
A connected system where information is available on demand — faceted search, global search, contextual links.
Let the user finish the task. Fewer modals, cleaner paths, task-oriented layouts.
Information architecture
The IA had three jobs: give every persona a home page, make the well hierarchy legible from field-level down to sensor-level, and turn a barely-functional global search into a faceted one.
FieldSight 2.0 ├── Dashboard · role-based · customisable cards ├── Wells & Pads · taxonomy: Field → Pad → Well → Component │ ├── Production cards │ ├── Charts / Dynacards / Welllogs │ └── Advisories ├── Cases · case management workflow ├── Tasks · assign · track · close ├── My Vault · personal collation of charts, files, reports ├── Conversations · threaded collaboration + notifications ├── Reports · scheduled & on-demand ├── Knowledgebase · specs, procedures, Apex Energy tribal knowledge ├── Faceted Search · wells · cases · tasks · files · advisories · topics └── Administration · unified across sites, users, devices, roles
Key features
Eight capabilities that, together, changed what production teams expected from a digital oilfield platform.
Each persona lands on a dashboard tuned to their role — Production Manager sees pad-level KPIs, Field Operator sees today's tasks and site logs. Users can add, remove and re-order cards to match their day.
Every insight is a card. Production, advisory, chart, dynacard, welllog, task — all share the same skeleton, so learning one means learning all.
Task-oriented flows (e.g. new site setup, well onboarding, P1 resolution) replaced menu-driven navigation. The system asks ‘what are you trying to do?’ before ‘which page?’
Conversations, notifications, mentions and artifact-sharing are first-class citizens — not bolted on. Every case, well and advisory can host a thread.
Every action, artifact and decision leaves a timestamped trail — critical for audit, regulatory reporting and post-incident review.
Global search returns wells, cases, tasks, files, advisories and topics — filterable by facet. Users save frequent searches as personal shortcuts.
A personal space to collate charts, welllogs, dynacards, files and drafts — the raw material for reports, plans and cases.
No more multiple logins across admin modules. Sites, users, devices, roles and subsidiaries live in one Administration surface.
Looking ahead
Beyond 2.0, we prototyped how voice and AR could extend the surface into the field — reducing gloves-off screen taps and making expert knowledge portable to any well site.
A voice-first assistant on the truck-cab tablet — ask ‘what's happening on Well 12?’ and get a spoken summary of advisories, tasks and last-known status.
Overlay live SCADA data and step-by-step procedures on the physical well through a hands-free AR headset — expert diagnostics in the field, without the expert on-site.
Outcomes
70
Hi-fi screens shipped
6
Journey maps validated
7
Personas aligned
1
Source of truth handbook
The redefinition became the single source of truth for Apex Energy, TechSolve, developers, BAs and stakeholders — a shared handbook aligning every downstream decision to the vision of a data-driven, situationally aware, faster and smarter FieldSight.