Improving the user experience of touchscreen text-based code editor in an industrial robot controller

Sammanfattning: This project investigated the touchscreen text-based code editor in OmniCore FlexPendant to improve its usability and user experience. This is a powerful but complex application used to program industrial robots. The objective is to redesign the user interface and interactions to make them more userfriendly and intuitive, with the goal of improving efficiency. The principles for designing complex applications and touchscreen products are generated as an outcome. From an academic standpoint, the research aims to fill the gap in text-based code editors for robot controller design and inspire touchscreen code editor design in other fields. Design thinking served as the framework for the design process, which encompassed seven steps that ranged from exploration to conceptualization and user testing. Guidance for improvement is ideated by ’become a user,’ competitive analysis, and user studies. In the design phase, a high-fidelity prototype is built upon the original design with completely new interfaces, structures, and interactions. The user experience and usability are evaluated during user testing by counting task completion time, applying two standard user experience measurements, and conducting a brief interview. The results indicate that the new design achieved better completion efficiency in tasks, better user experience and usability scores, and received positive feedback from participants. The new solution meets the objectives and is considered a good reference for the design of industrial robot programming solutions.