Product Vision and Strategy
Interaction Design
Business Analysis
User Research

Building a new manufacturing platform and customer portal to drive transformative change

Experience Design
Software Engineering

To connect an ecosystem of products to help customers solve their manufacturing challenges while overhauling how customers access and experience the solutions.

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Hexagon, a global leader in digital reality solutions and manufacturing technology, approached us to bring their new manufacturing vision to life.

This started with a simple idea, to connect their ecosystem of existing software and hardware to help customers solve their manufacturing challenges, while overhauling how customers access and experience the solutions.

We sought to drive transformation across the entire manufacturing portfolio through a modern, connected technology platform, and user-friendly customer portal. To achieve this ambitious goal, Parallax deployed multiple teams across new product development, content marketing, and experience design, following the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and working as a close and integrated partner.

Our work with Nexus has covered many areas, from creating a bold new brand and bringing product identities to life to developing immersive and useful products and experiences. Our solutions provided customers with the necessary functionality to work efficiently and collaboratively, achieving their objectives.

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We started by shaping the story and defining the purpose before agreeing on a name. Nexus was born, both in terms of identity and vision.

The name ‘Nexus’ came from an exhaustive, collaborative branding process with multiple stakeholders across the organisation. With its definition rooted in connectivity and meaning a “central focal point”, it reflected both the scale and ambition and how it aims to transform the manufacturing industry.

To build anticipation, we needed to introduce Nexus to the world and tell the story of how it will drive the future of manufacturing. Starting with the Nexus brand, our content specialists created a story, tone of voice and visual style to promote what was to come. To launch Nexus, we created an interactive launch page utilising video and advanced animation to showcase the functionality and benefits. This experience matched the Nexus ambition and won many awards, including a coveted Site of the day on Awwwards, for its creativity and modern storytelling.

Bringing a new brand to market and building momentum

Nexus was officially unveiled at the annual HxGN Live conference in Las Vegas, where we created an immersive 3D-style showroom that allowed attendees to explore the benefits of Hexagon's software and hardware products in real-time. 

Additionally, we had the unique opportunity to announce Nexus' advanced collaboration functionality at the annual Microsoft Build developer conference, where the Chief Executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, presented our video showcasing how Nexus integrates with Microsoft Teams to improve collaboration.

Following on from this, we created another video to show how Nexus will be at the heart of the future of smart manufacturing. Taking all of the branding, content, vision and ideas and bringing them together in a video to announce Nexus to new audiences. 

Our continued partnership with Hexagon enabled us to help bring their manufacturing vision to life, with Nexus at its centre.

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A new approach to design to create a better user experience

Hexagon has a long history of developing market-leading software products. However, due to their complex nature, these products have often been difficult to use, creating a steep learning curve for customers. Additionally, as many of the products were acquired over time, they followed different design styles and approaches, resulting in an inconsistent user experience.

Nexus presented an opportunity to bring all of Hexagon's software together under a modern and easy-to-use interface while also being able to design at scale. To achieve this, we developed a comprehensive design system that could be applied to all future software products and updates. After researching the software portfolio and existing design systems, we selected MUI, a react component library and design system based on Material Design, as our base. Using this and the new Nexus branding, we created a complete design system that could be rolled out across multiple software types, from web-based apps to complex engineering desktop software.

With the new design system in place, we designed new web-based applications for the launch of brand-new Nexus products. Our UX process and experience design principles ensured that we designed effectively, with close customer involvement. To date, we have designed and released three new Nexus software products as beta products.

To facilitate the internal teams' use of the new design system, we created two NPM packages. These packages enable all new Nexus applications developed by the teams to quickly incorporate the new design system into their React applications.

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Crafting a product identity system for over 800 products

To complement the portal, we worked closely with the global marketing teams to develop a consistent and holistic visual aesthetic for all Hexagon software products. We discovered that the previous system lacked inspiration and flexibility, so we presented three design routes that varied in style and approach. All three options were well received, but we ultimately decided to pursue a creative and contemporary style that used a grid-based layout and bold icons to highlight each product's unique features and benefits.