The Challenge

The challenge was to better understand employees’ frustrations across varying departments and levels when scheduling and planning mining activities

This mining company was implementing a new mining software that would be used by thousands of employees daily to help with execution planning and scheduling within the mine site.

The Approach

We conducted 15 ethnographic interviews with employees across production, maintenance, logistics and engineering

We also led over 20+ hours of observational research that included several key meetings and spending an entire day underground shadowing key employees to better understand how scheduling interfaced with the front-line.

The Result

The result of this work helped better understand the current challenges between varying roles inside the mine, and helped guide the implementation of a new scheduling technology

The project resulted in the creation of a current state process map with a set of specific pain points mapped to it; a set of overarching insights that covered behavioural and systemic context; and a set of design principles and speculative concepts that helped influence the implementation of the new technology.