UX Researcher
This was a 3-month project, from October until December 2025, done for TechnipFMC, a Norwegian company that provides software to oil-extraction companies like ExxonMobil and Petrobras to control and manage their rigs in the middle of the ocean. The focus of this project was to do an unbiased analysis of their in-house software "UCOS " that they provide for these companies.
Goal of the project
The goal of this project was to assess the capabilities, limitations and overall competitiveness of their software "UCOS ", used to control the machinery for oil extraction. The focus was to evaluate how its features and functionalities are experienced by their users and how it measures up against a leading third-party competitor "AVEVA"
My role
I was responsible to investigate and find out what were the biggest pain points for the end user in terms of the features and functionalities of UCOS and later compare them with AVEVA's current implementation.
The team
We were a team of four people, consisting of a Project Manager, a Tech Lead, a System Engineer and me, as a UX Researcher. We were based in both Sweden and Norway and had an Agile methodology throughout the whole project.
UCOS
UCOS is the software that enables the users to control the logic, monitor alarms and perform analysis of data from different sensors of the whole machinery of the oil rig.
AVEVA
AVEVA is a direct competitor of UCOS and was used as a reference to compare the user experience in regards to the different functionalities and capabilities of both systems.
End User
For the scope of this project, the end user is ExxonMobil, as they are the ones actually using UCOS in their day-to-day activities to operate the subsea production system and machinery.
Methodology
The assessment was done using the Double Diamond framework, to ensure that both understanding the problem and formulating the solution were approached with he end user in mind.
Discover
Understanding the problem through exploration and evidence gathering.
Define
Validate
Deliver
Synthesizing findings to identify root causes and patterns.
Exploring solution directions grounded in existing capabilities.
Formulating actionable and prioritized recommendations
Discover
The discovery phase focused on gathering diverse inputs to understand how UCOS is experienced in practice.
User Interviews
Initially, the customer wished that to find out which features were the biggest gaps in UCOS, was by me going through the UCOS myself and finding the gaps by interacting with it. But it was clear to me that this would lead to a high risk of pointing functionalities that are not valued by the users and also miss some key functionalities by chance. So, I convinced them that the best method forward was to conduct user interviews with the actual people that use UCOS, which would have a much greater representation of the actual users' pains. Therefore, seven user interviews were held with people that use UCOS in a day-to-day setting, where they were asked about their experience with UCOS, their biggest pain points and how it could serve them better.
Hands-on familiarization
​Hands-on familiarization with the UCOS toolchain and runtime environment was done in parallel so I could get familiar with the tool and to validate the findings from the interviews against actual system behavior
Value
Conducting these interviews with end users provided an evidence-based understanding of user needs and ensures that user feedback is interpreted in the context of actual UCOS behavior.
Define
In the define phase, findings from interviews and hands-on work were synthesized to identify recurring patterns and root causes.
Feedback from interviews
After each interview, the feedback was then analyzed and then mapped into common topics in that feature. In addition, a comparison of how those functionalities are implemented in AVEVA was made.
Deep dive in each function
Then a detailed analysis of each functionality brought up in the interviews was presented, including what was the users' wishes, verbatims, how many times that topic was brought up in the interviews and a direct comparison with AVEVA's solution to that specific topic. All of that accompanied by print screens of the functionality of the system, to make it more visual and more clear of what the user's pain was.
Develop
During the develop phase, solution directions were explored based on the identified root causes rather than on isolated user requests. This included:
Recommendations
A priority-based user feedback recommendations was made with a prioritization for implementation of the wishes from the users. ​Each recommendation was directly traceable to observed issues and supported by examples from the discovery and define phases.
Key Findings
It was perceived that the majority of issues raised by users are not UCOS' limitations, but configuration and requirement alignment issues between stakeholders. It was then noted that UCOS already supports these capabilities the the user was lacking.
Deliver
The deliver phase resulted in the structured recommendations presented in the recommendation section. These recommendations are grouped into:
Implementation feasilibitly
Once the list of pain points of the user had brought up in the interviews was finalized, it was investigated the feasibility of them in UCOS. It was then discovered that most of them were already feasible in UCOS, it was just a matter of enabling each feature for each client. So it seems that the root cause was a lack of communication and clear requirements, between the two parties or some fault in the execution during the configuration phase.
Standard features
It was recommend to included some features as standard, as they are appreciated by the big majority of users and are often used in their day-to-day activities. And, if the user prefers not to use it, they can simply choose not to. Also, UCOS is already capable of implementing them.
Project-specific requirements
The recommendation here was to have a better alignment of what features need to be included for each project in UCOS beforehand, so all the needs in terms of features are implemented and UCOS serves better its users. Because, if the requirements were well aligned before the project was delivered between the different stakeholders, the users would have a much better fitting usage of UCOS for their activities
Positives on UCOS
I also added in the report all the positive aspects of UCOS that were brought up from the users during the interviews.
Challenges
There were many challenges that were present during this project, but some of them can be described as:
Scope
The scope of the analysis was shifted mid-project, which meant that a lot of of the work that was already done had to be reviewed.
Bureaucracy
​A lot of time was spent in bureaucracy, which meant that the speed in which things moved was not as expected. So I proposed that the process should be done in a more streamlined way with only a few key stakeholder taking a decision as possible.
Tight deadline
As the project had a 3-month timespan from the beginning, it was needed to have a high performance and productivity between the team, with clear expectations, responsibilities splits and regular check-ups on the progress to make sure that the report would be delivered on time.
Distance
Every team member was seated in a different city, which meant that most interactions were done online. So, to mitigate that, a workshop was done with all people involved in the clients office in Norway, so we could algin face-to-face the expectations for the comming project
17
different features were proposed to better suit the end user
​of which:
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were already feasible to be implemented in UCOS
Achievements
By the end of the project, all features explored with the interviews were then investigated in how they could be implemented in the current UCOS.