SCIA Engineer Smart Workstations

SCIA Engineer, is the leading structural engineering software, featuring tools to model, analyse and optimise a 3D model of any structure, material or load condition. With a CAD user interface at its core, SCIA Engineer’s specific focus is advanced structural analysis: loading, stability calculations, building code compliance, and structure optimisation: an all in one structural engineers’s toolbox. Despite its prominence as market leader, SCIA Engineer struggled with a number of usability issues that presented an obstacle when onboarding new users.

Client:
SCIA Engineering, structural engineers

Solution:
As a member of a UX team of experts entrusted with elevating user experience and interface to a customer-centric level, we redesigned SCIA controls to cater to novice engineers entering the rapidly changing world of structural engineering, launching SCIA Engineer 21. SCIA Engineer 21 delivers an improved onboarding experience, cutting down on training periods, and reducing the learning curve. The main challenge being establishing an intuitive ease of use that retains the existing customer by offering improved workflow patterns.

The Workstations are part of the Process Toolbar, a component that contains the most frequently used tools, organised according to a number of processes (Workstations) we identified through user research. The user can easily switch between Workstations, pull up 2 at a time, and even select which Workstations they need to enable in the project.  

Impact:
Workstations enable focused work at each stage of structural engineering minimising the visual load. The Process Toolbar, became a popular feature earning 8/10 fans among customers. Furthermore , SCIA Engineer 21 launched successfully with an impressive 4 out of 5 fans among customers. SCIA Engineer is more intuitive through understanding customer needs, behaviours, and struggles, reducing onboarding time for new users by 80%, from up to 10 days to 2.