Stewardship - Raw Materials Characterization

Business Line


Fuels & Lubes

Design Team

Design Strategy

Project Type

Workshop Facilitation, Information Architecture, Webdesign, Branding

Project Length

3 Months

Overview

The goal is to design an intuitive, user-friendly, and highly functional dashboard that provides real-time insights into key operational metrics for oil and gas companies. The dashboard will help users monitor, analyze, and make data-driven decisions to optimize operations, improve safety, and reduce costs.

What is the benefit for the business?

The goal is to design an intuitive, user-friendly, and highly functional dashboard that provides real-time insights into key operational metrics for oil and gas companies. The dashboard will help users monitor, analyze, and make data-driven decisions to optimize operations, improve safety, and reduce costs.

What is the benefit for the user?

For users, this translates into reliable energy supply, cost-effective products, and cleaner technologies—meeting evolving demands while reducing environmental impact. Proactive opportunity identification ensures ExxonMobil stays ahead in energy transition, benefiting industries, consumers, and stakeholders with innovative and sustainable solutions.

Raw Materials Characterization

ExxonMobil employs advanced techniques for Raw Materials Characterization to ensure quality and performance in its products. The company utilizes cutting-edge analytical methods, such as spectroscopy, chromatography, and rheology, to assess the chemical and physical properties of crude oil, natural gas, and petrochemical feedstocks.

By rigorously testing raw materials, ExxonMobil optimizes refining processes, enhances product consistency, and maintains compliance with industry standards. Their expertise in material science enables efficient resource utilization and supports innovation in energy solutions.

Challenge

Different functions across the value chain feed, receive, and rely on detailed data around the molecular make-up of raw materials (ex: crudes). This complex process, enabled through proprietary technology, is considered a critical competitive advantage for ExxonMobil. However, the Business wanted to know if value was left on the table. We were brought in to conduct a holistic deep dive to uncover opportunities for value creation.

Solution

We interviewed dozens of stakeholders across Upstream and Downstream to understand current and potential usage of raw material data. Our findings revealed hidden crude data, shallow data interpretation and decision-making, and limited use of commercial and market intelligence. We recommended a set of opportunities ranging from $10M to $150M/year in cost-savings and new value generation.

They included optimizing refinery operations by analyzing the data mid-transport ($75-$150M/year), broadening the range of viable supply crudes ($50M/year/refinery site), optimizing purchase economics and refinery operations ($20M/year), and driving equity crude margins ($10-$50M/year).

Design Process

The design process section is a crucial part of your UI/UX case study. It showcases your problem-solving methodology and the steps taken to arrive at the final design solution.

Emphasize

User Research User InterviewCompetitive Analysis

Define

User Persona Goal Statement Empathy Map

Ideate

Brainstorming Card SortingUser Flow

Design

User Research User Interview Competitive Analysis

Test

Check Usability Survey Insight Improvements

Payments & Rewards

Challenge

We wanted to make a safe and easy way to digitally pay for fuel and earn loyalty points right at the pump. The prior innovative method of payment, the SpeedPass dongle was becoming outdated and too costly to maintain and ExxonMobil needed a new way for customers to pay for fuel that matched the ease-of-use and security of Speedpass.

Solution

We worked closely with Payment and Loyalty Solutions Operation (PLSO), Fuels Marketing, and the vendors to identify needs of both the business and our consumers so as to create an experience like no other when purchasing fuel and earning rewards while at our sites.

Empathy Map

Think Feel

"Inconsistent raw material quality delays production."

Efficient testing reduces costs and waste.

Limited data sharing between suppliers and labs.

Hear

We need faster test results to meet production schedules

The current methods are too manual and error-prone.

Document all characterization data for audits.

See

Spreadsheets/manual records for data tracking.

Demand for sustainable/eco-friendly materials.

Shift toward AI-driven material analysis.

Say & Do

Run repeat tests to confirm results.

Automation would cut our turnaround time in half.

Attend conferences on analytical techniques.

Participant Demographics

A wireframe is a rough schematic created in the early stages of digital product design to help visualize and communicate the structure of a product or website.

Users Age

Phone Type

Internet Browser

Workplace Type

Users Group

Jeff Hardy

Josefina Mana

Fran Ria

Edmund Franco

Persona

Name

Jenifer Lawrence

Occupation

Jenifer Lawrence

Professional Background & Responsibilities

  • Works with suppliers to verify material properties (purity, particle size, crystallinity, thermal stability).
  • Collaborates with formulation scientists, process engineers, and QA/QC teams.
  • Troubleshoots batch inconsistencies and supports scale-up from lab to production.

Need

  • Faster, more automated analysis to reduce manual workload.
  • Standardized protocols for consistent material evaluation.

Demographic

  • Age: 35-45
  • Education: PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry
  • Experience: 8-12 years in material characterization, quality control
  • Location: R&D lab or manufacturing facility (US/EU/Asia)

Pain Point

  • Time-consuming sample preparation and method development.
  • Lack of integration between different analytical instruments.

Org Activity

Tech Sevy

Social Skills

Testing Methodology

  • Platform: Web-based dashboard (tested on Chrome, Edge, and Firefox)
  • Participants: 8-10 users (mix of experienced and novice lab personnel)
  • Session Duration: 45-60 minutes per user
  • Testing Type: Moderated remote/in-person sessions + task-based scenarios

Key Metrics Evaluated

This usability test ensures the Raw Material Characterization Dashboard is intuitive, efficient, and aligned with lab workflows before rollout.

Low fidelity wireframe

User Interface

Wanna collaborate?

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Hey, thanks for checking out my work.

I’ve been fascinated with the way people interact with technology since forever. I’m particularly keen on digital products designed to make life easier for human beings.

What are you working on?

If you want to know more about my design process, or if you want to talk about a cool idea, don’t hesitate to hit me up.

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