Subsurface Data to Insights  - Live+

Industry

Oil & Gas

Client

Walking Tree, LinqX

Service

UX Design

Date

2025

Overview

Turning underground operations into actionable insights.
In hydraulic fracturing (fracing), every parameter—from pressure to chemical mix—can impact safety and cost.
Before Live+, engineers were juggling 6–8 disconnected tools just to understand what was happening.


Goal:

Create one unified platform for engineers to monitor live data, simulate “what-if” scenarios, and prevent costly errors.


SITUATION

Oil & gas engineers work in extreme environments—sometimes with limited connectivity and no margin for mistakes.

  • On-site engineers struggled to see real-time changes quickly.

  • Remote teams needed to compare planned vs. actual performance across multiple wells.

  • Project managers needed a single, trustworthy summary to track risk and cost.

💬 “We realized our users didn’t need more data. They needed a way to see meaning in the data.”

High pressure, high risk, and high data overload.


TASK

As the Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for:

  • Translating field workflows into an interactive, usable system.

  • Designing for low-connectivity environments.

  • Balancing real-time monitoring, simulation, and collaboration needs across roles.

Lead the end-to-end UX for a complex technical platform.


ACTION

  1. Learning the Job

We joined field operations and observed how engineers responded when things went wrong.
→ This helped design for real decisions, not ideal workflows.

  1. Mapping Workflows

We condensed dozens of tasks into five key use cases:

  • Monitor a job live

  • Run a simulation

  • Compare past vs. current jobs

  • Get proactive alerts

  • Share findings with teams

  1. Designing with Familiar Mental Models

We structured the UI exactly how engineers think:

Pad → Wells → Stages
Sensors or simulation models track each stage.
This reduced the learning curve dramatically.

  1. UX Decisions That Mattered

Decision

Why It Helped

UX Principle

Live vs. Simulate Toggle

Safe scenario testing

Progressive Disclosure

Vertical Well View

Matched underground layout

Recognition over Recall

One-click Plot Comments

Contextual collaboration

Collaborative UX

Red/Green Job Pins

Quick job overview

Color Accessibility + Fitts’ Law

Dynamic Parameter Sliders

Instant feedback loops

Immediate Feedback

From noise to narrative.


RESULT

Live+ and Cempro replaced multiple disjointed tools with one cohesive platform where:
✅ Engineers monitor live data in real time
✅ Teams simulate “what-if” scenarios safely
✅ Managers get risk alerts instantly

Outcomes:

  • Reduced decision lag

  • Improved collaboration between field and office teams

  • Simplified complex data into visual stories that anyone could understand

From noise to narrative.


LEARNINGS & NEXT

We learned that great UX in technical domains is about aligning with users’ mental models, not teaching them new ones.

Next Steps:

  • AI-driven pattern detection for early risk alerts

  • Offline sync for remote regions

  • Rolling out shared design system across Core+, XOPS, and Live X

Simplicity wins — especially in complex systems.


CLOSING NOTE

What was once complex technical noise is now a clear visual story.
Live+ empowers teams—from oil fields to control rooms—to understand and act on what’s happening beneath the surface.

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