In early 2023 I made the jump from health-tech to climate-tech, joining Parallel Systems as the team’s first Product Designer. For a year and a half I had the opportunity to collaborate with brilliant minds to prototype an autonomous rail product with the potential to take trucks off highways and decarbonize transportation.
What follows are highlights from my time with Parallel Systems.
I joined Parallel as they were ready to mature their control systems from Engineering prototypes into customer-ready applications. Fleet App is the primary control software for their vehicles, was the first system I contributed to, and an absolutely fascinating information architecture challenge!
Role: Research, Concept, Prototypes, UI
To familiarize myself with the rail industry, standards, and common operations, I built relationships with terminal managers, dispatchers, and locomotive engineers around Los Angeles. I would listen, take notes, and develop learning artifacts which I could then share back as evidence of my mental model. Back at the office I'd partner with the Operations team to develop Service Blueprints to further drive alignment around the overlap of today's rail orchestration and our product.
Role: Research, Communications coordination
The most common artifacts I would generate while at Parallel were systems abstractions; visual representations that aimed to reframe complexity into a more knowable, approachable format that teams could rally behind, critique, and refine.
To assist with storytelling and product definition, I was asked to develop new designs for the team's flagship vehicle as well as their "Micro-Terminal" concept. Already spread across multiple initiatives, I worked with the executive team to create a budget to contract with two exceptional teams: Luke Mack, an automotive Industrial Designer, to focus on the vehicle, and Untitled Experiences, a team of architects and experience designers, to focus on the Micro-Terminal. I partnered with these teams over five weeks to deliver inspiring visual concepts that both met Engineering specs and came in under budget.
Role: Manager, Collaborator
