The engineering team at Sentient Science developed a core technology, called DigitalClone, that uses physics based prognostic models to forecast the time frame of observable damage of rotating equipment, such as wind turbines.

It was the job of designer, Aaron P. Smith, to create a user experience that would allow the intended user to engage directly with these models. It was from this work that DigitalClone Live was created. DigitalClone Live is a responsive web application that provides users easy access to the information that they require and provides simple to use tools to give them accurate forecasting information.

DigitalClone Live is designed and developed under the ideas outlined by the Industrial Internet. The industrial Internet draws together fields such as machine learning, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine communication and Cyber-physical system to ingest data from machines, analyze it (often in real-time) and use it to adjust operations.

For this to be effective the user experience has to engage user that work within three different environments. A significant portion of work takes place out in the field, where workers travel to the machine or site. Another portion occurs in service centers, where machines are brought to common shops to be worked on. Finally, an important part of the work is done in operation centers.

By creating a successful user experience for all of the different user types/environments, DigitalClone Live provides accurate forecasting information along with integrating itself into a users regular work routine.

The UX design of DigitalClone Live faced three primary challenges to over come. The first challenge was how to organize and allow the user to intuitively navigate the massive amount of information that could be available through this web application. For example, a wind turbine fleet can consist of over 6,000 turbines and our technology provides information from the fleet level all the way down to the individual sub-components (gears and bearings) of an individual wind turbine.

The second challenge was to make this interface easily usable by a user In the Field on a mobile device to a user on a large monitor within an Operations Center.

The last challenge was how to engage the user so that they would provide updated data to DigitalClone Live so that the forecast maintain accurate.

By overcoming these massive challenges DigitalClone Live has become a responsive web application that engages the users and provides them with the information that is most pertinent to their role and responsibilities. This is allowing organization to alter short-term and long-term strategies on how they now manage the failure of their field assets.

The success of this design has lead to a sellable Software as a Service (SaaS) product that has lead to capturing over 30% of the North American wind market in just over a year and a successful investment round that will support the scaling of this SaaS product and the exploration of additional industrial markets to scale into.