Formant F3 Platform Redesign

Formant is a robotics platform. It connects robot operations, telemetry, and analytics into one system. Think of it as mission control for robot fleets.
 
I joined the product design team to help turn the existing platform into F3. The interface needed to work for people who weren’t engineers. My job was usability, navigation, and building a modular design framework that could hold everything from live teleoperation feeds to fleet-wide analytics.
Client

Formant

Project Date

2023-2025

Category

Product Design · Prototypes · UI/UX · Visual Experience Design · Web

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01

Challenge

The platform was powerful. It was also hard to use. The whole thing was built for engineers who already knew the data, which meant anyone else trying to find a simple insight or check on a robot was fighting the interface to get there.
 
We couldn’t just simplify it. The engineers needed their depth. But operators needed quick answers, and fleet managers needed the big picture without drowning in telemetry.
 
So we mapped it out. Three personas, three very different needs, one platform. That became the design problem: how do you build an interface that adapts to whoever’s using it?

02

Design Approach

The answer was modularity.
 
We redesigned the navigation so you could move between teleoperation, dashboards, and analytics without getting lost. Then we built what I started calling the rectangle framework. Each rectangle is a data block. Charts, metrics, video feeds, logs. You drag them around, arrange them however you need. Your dashboard looks different from mine because we’re solving different problems.
 
The process started on paper. Sketches, storyboards, user journeys. We tested navigation patterns in wireframes before touching any visual design. Mid-fidelity prototypes helped us figure out density and hierarchy, which is where most dashboards fall apart. Too much data, not enough structure.
 
I worked with engineering to document every component and pattern into a shared design system in Figma, built on Tailwind and ShadCN UI. That system became the foundation for everything that came after.

03

Analytics

This was the part I’m most proud of.
 
I designed the analytics experience that turned raw robot telemetry into something you could actually read. Compare performance across environments. Track events over time. Spot problems before they become expensive.
 
Before, analytics felt intimidating. Walls of numbers. After, it felt like reading a story about what your robots were doing and why. Teams started making decisions faster because the data finally made sense at a glance.

04

AI Intelligence Layer

We spent time early on figuring out where intelligence belonged in the platform. Not as a separate feature. Not as a chatbot bolted on the side. We wanted it inside the workflow, showing up when it was useful.
 
We tested things like contextual recommendations, predictive alerts, and trend summaries that flagged stuff users would normally miss. A lot of those ideas made it into what Formant now calls Formant Intelligence. The point was always the same: surface the insight, don’t make people go looking for it.

05

Enterprise Integrations

The modular structure paid off here. SoftBank Robotics and other enterprise partners needed their own branded portals that could manage different robot types in one place.
 
We built white-labeled deployments on the same F3 foundation, customized per organization. Same core system, different skin, different workflows. That’s the beauty of modular: you design it once, then let it flex.

06

Outcome and Impact

F3 shipped and the numbers told the story.
 
60% reduction in downtime. 8x increase in robot utilization. 72% faster rollouts and system integrations. (Those are Formant’s publicly reported numbers.)
 
But the thing I care about most is simpler than metrics. People could actually use it. Operators stopped asking engineers for help reading dashboards. Managers could build their own views in minutes instead of filing tickets. The platform got out of people’s way and let them do their jobs.
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