Ansys Discovery: Ribbon Customization and Quick Access Toolbar
This project aimed for Ansys Discovery users to customize their toolbars for easy access to their most commonly used tools and simplify their experience.
the problem 🤔
Users have limited freedom in customizing their experience to easily access commonly used tools.
Users have very limited bandwidth in customizing their Ribbon toolbar, only currently being able to reorder and hide/unhide tabs. There is a separate tool menu feature called the Halo which contains some commonly used tools, but it is not customizable.
The Ansys Discovery interface—tools are categorized into different tabs in the Ribbon toolbar, while the Halo, which is accessible by a click, includes commonly used tools of different categories.
The settings for the Ribbon toolbar only include the following functions: hide, unhide, and reorder tabs. The ability to reorder tabs is unclear—it is only evident once a user clicks and drags on a tab in the list.
the goal 📌
We want to:
⭐️ Allow users to simplify their experience by being able to customize tabs, groups, and tools in the Ribbon toolbar.
⭐️ Make it easier for users to access their most commonly used tools.
research 📚
Through competitive analysis and discussions with product and design management on user feedback from ACE (Ansys Customer Experience), the following insights were found:
Navigating between Ribbon tabs is tedious: Users have to go back and forth between tabs to find tools.
Commonly used tools can be project specific: Based on what the user is working on, the tools they use most commonly can be different for each project (i.e. modeling for one project, specific simulations for another)
The Halo, an existing tool shortcut mechanism, is not utilized: The Halo is meant to provide quick access to pre-set modeling and physics tools, but requires multiple clicks to be accessed and cannot be customized. It is not convenient to access, and the tools in the Halo may not reflect a user's most commonly used tools.
ideation 💭
Brainstorming was based on the following goals:
Make tools easy to reach and access
Allow users to customize what tools they want to access easily
Ideas from brainstorming sessions included:
Customizable toolbar above/bellow the Ribbon
Customizable Halo
Customize tools within the Ribbon
Customize the Ribbon by clicking and dragging tools to add/remove them
Favorites tab in the Ribbon that users can add tools to
The ideas were discussed with Design, Product, and Engineering and judged based on usability, impact, feasibility, and consistency.
final design ⚙️
After 4 iterations, the final design* included the following features:
Ribbon customization (settings and context menu):
Reorder tabs, groups, and tools
Hide/unhide tabs, groups, and tools
Create new tabs and groups
Reset, import, and export customizations
Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)
Add tools to the QAT using the settings panel or right-clicking on a tool in the Ribbon.
*Due to the features being unreleased, full pictures cannot be shown.
improvements and impact ✨
takeaways ✨
This project was a great real-life experience in which I got to work with different teams involved in the product—working with Engineering made me consider feasibility and consistency with design systems, while working with Product prompted me to think about how the feature would fit in Discovery and the Ansys brand as a whole.
It is super exciting to work on a feature that hundreds of thousands of people will use, and it was an honor to be able to improve such a central feature of Discovery. What made this experience so meaningful was the people—working with everyone involved towards an improvement that would improve users' experiences significantly.
From start to finish, I researched, discussed, brainstormed, iterated, and finished off the project with documentation for the implementation of the feature. Special thanks to Sanjay Ranganayakulu and Roman Walsh for their help on this project!
