Pall Corporation | Package Water Initiative (PWI)
Clean water is fundamental to life and critical across many industries, yet the definition of “clean” varies widely—from water used in wine and beer production, to ceramic counter polishing, to municipal drinking water systems serving entire communities. As part of Pall’s Package Water Initiative, my role as a UX Research and Design professional was to help translate these diverse requirements into a clear, usable, and scalable human–machine interface (HMI) that could perform reliably in demanding, real-world environments.
The project began with an in-depth evaluation of Pall’s existing package water solutions. I conducted on-site visits and operator interviews, documenting environmental conditions such as noise, lighting, protective gear, weather exposure, and physical constraints that directly influenced interaction methods. Current HMI screens and workflows were assessed in context, revealing usability challenges amplified by high operator turnover and limited training time. These findings informed detailed workflows and task analyses for both operators and site advisors, clarifying goals, decision points, and calls to action across routine operation, monitoring, and exception handling.
Using this research, I helped define prioritized information hierarchies and success criteria aligned to different user roles and operating scenarios. Emphasis was placed on simplicity, clarity, and rapid learnability—ensuring that critical system status, alerts, and actions were immediately visible and understandable. These measurable goals allowed progress to be tracked across usability, efficiency, and error reduction, ultimately giving program leadership the confidence to incorporate the updates into the product roadmap and position the improved HMI as a sales differentiator.
The final design proposed a streamlined, touch-based interface that transitioned the system from a 17” mouse-driven display to an 8” touchscreen. Despite late-stage changes in the product development lifecycle that introduced significant churn and complexity, the redesigned HMI delivered a more intuitive, resilient, and scalable solution—better suited to the environments, users, and industries Pall serves.
Current HMI screens: starting point of project
Pall’s existing package water solution software.
Site Visit / Operator Interviews documentation of environmental conditions and contextual survey
Work and Task Flows of Operator and Site Advisor | Calls to Action / Decision Tree
Setting goals for VARYING success criteria enable the tracking of progress and evaluation of multiple aspects. The improvement in multiple areas provided program manager the CONFIDENCE to incorporate the updates and use as a sales tool.
Proposed HMI screen with sampled display and interaction patterns Final HMI screen changed from 17” mouse driven to 8” touch screen. These late changes within the product development LIFECYCLE caused a large amount of churn and TURMOIL.
