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BenchVue LCR Meter

Challenge: 

Create, design, and test a new LCR Meter application for Keysight's BenchVue platform. Design the LCR Meter to match the BenchVue design style while implementing the features and functions found on the actual LCR Meter hardware. 

Introduction

BenchVue is a platform that contains access to a wide variety of instrument applications for simple connection, interaction, manipulation, and data collection. For this particular project I was tasked with leading usability work for the creation of a new application, the LCR Meter. The goal was to create a software application through which users could remotely interact and collect data from connected LCR Meters. This would mean taking core functionality available on the hardware and representing them on a software interface that could be easily understood and intuitive for these new users.

 

What are LCR Meters?

LCR Meters are a type of electronic test equipment used to measure inductance, capacitance, and resistance. For more information on Keysight's LCR Meters, please click here.

 

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Keysight's E4980AL LCR Meter
Investigation

As someone who had never worked with LCR Meters before, the first task I did was look up documentation on LCR Meters and view YouTube tutorials that walked me through common tasks a customer would need to perform. I was able to track down a spare LCR Meter in our office which I used to reference and play around with to get some hands-on experience. 

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Once I had a decent background understanding of what the LCR Meter could do, I wanted to identify the common use cases that users would have with their LCR Meter. I contacted the hardware development team, located in Japan, as well as hardware support engineers and scheduled some interview time to understand their use cases and common customer use cases with LCR Meters. 

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Common use cases for the LCR Meter:

  • Capturing basic measurements

  • Capture point measurement on a specific frequency/voltage

  • Perform corrections to make sure measurements are accurate

  • Perform a sweep of a list of values across varying frequencies

  • Capture and record data over time
     

Following these discussions and requirements gathering, the project manager, developers, and I put together some user stories to work on that identified the functions users would expect to have.

Design Process

As the developers went through their investigations and estimation process, I began sketching and mocking up early designs of what the LCR Meter would look like. It should be noted that BenchVue has an application template that is used for each of their apps. As a result, there was a fairly straightforward look and feel that I was required to work within. Here's an example of the Digital Multimeter (DMM) Application, one of the first applications developed for BenchVue and thus with basic functionality, to give an idea of the typical look and feel for BenchVue applications:

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Keysight's BenchVue DMM Application (Demo Mode)

The header, toolbar, and instrument bar make up the BenchVue "shell". Within an application, the templates are broken up into tabs with respective primary settings performed in the left-hand collapsible panel. Information is shown in the main display section, and while the DMM is fairly simple in acting as a read-only measure that is presented to the users, other applications such as the Oscilliscope app can allow users to interact with charts and tables on the main display section (seen below).

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Keysight's BenchVue Oscilloscope Application (Demo Mode)

With these constraints in mind, early mockups created in PowerPoint continued the structure of the BenchVue template and displayed the LCR tasks and BenchVue features as tabs across the top, with respective instrument/function settings on the left-hand side panel.

Initial mockups for LCR application

While not implementing all the available functions on an LCR Meter to the application, there were still a good amount of settings that we would be making available to the user. To address a better grouping and hierarchy of how these would be represented, I broke down the settings into this inital grouping and asked the support engineering team and a number of users to group and break it down to their preferences. This updated list based on their responses can be seen in the Settings Grouping image.

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Mockups were further developed in spikes as the team focused on addressing individual functions at a time. The next major change came when we decided to remove some features and separate the instrument functionality from BenchVue-specific functions due to confusion in the feedback from those who saw the early mockups. 

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Settings Grouping
Second Round of Mockups Shown to Support Team/Users for Feedback
Usability Testing

Once developers had an early build available that represented the UI and was functional on the backend, we scheduled a group of usability tests with actual LCR Meter customers. These single hour sessions focused on the day-to-day work these participants would have and their interactions and expectations when using LCR Meters. The participants would then be shown the latest LCR build and be asked to walkthrough their daily tasks and provide feedback using the think-aloud protocol. 

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These sessions were recorded on WebEx and a report was written detailing feedback and observations for remote members of the team. Based on the usability sessions, we were able to diagnose areas that we needed improvement on, such as interaction of the spot corrections table, or identify functions that participants weren't as enthusiastic about and didn't really need, such as the Uncertainty Calculator. One particular feedback that changed our UI a bit was an indication by users who wanted to see the individual bin number of a measurement and not the cumulative bin count. I proposed a change to the UI that was then implemented for the released version. Feedback such as the above was necessary and useful to help guide our team towards creating a stable and useful first version of the product for customers. 

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Once we had our Beta version available, I contacted the previous group of participants and performed another usability session with them. This was done more to verify any last-minute changes that needed to be done, as well as thank them for their insight and provided them licenses for the released version for their time. 

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Current Version of LCR Meter (in Demo Mode)
What I Learned

  • If unfamiliar with an instrument or application, take the time to understand what it does and how it's used. Not only through interaction with customers and users, but read the documentation and rely on the support and hardware engineers to gain insight into how functions are they way they are. This also provides a great base for being able to understand the terminology and use cases of the customers.

  • Rely on your support team! They have wide and varied insight into customer issues both in terms of quality and quantity of problems that could and should be easily fixed. Their experience and exposure to customers should be able to shed lots of light on issues.

  • It can be tempting to design for an instrument that previously had minimal screen space and all of a sudden have large visual real estate and want to add a bunch of stuff. Hold back! Don't confuse the user and remember to accommodate their transfer of learning. Build similar interactions and "modes" that the user is familiar with to help onboard them with your software. 

  • Even if stuck with a template and design, there are always ways to customize and add new elements to represent information and data to the users. 

  • Use your customers! Half of our participants were those who sent feedback to the BenchVue team in the past asking for an LCR Meter application. We were able to contact them for contextual inquiries and usability testing and they were more than happy to accommodate and partner with us through the majority of the development phase. Now they're happy owners of the latest LCR Meter Application!

Where is the BenchVue LCR Meter application now?

  • The LCR Meter application was officially released in December 2018 along with the BenchVue platform 2019 Update.

  • Responses have been favorable and the customers we worked with during usability testing are happy and satisfied with the application

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