Risk
Assessment
end to end
Designing a critical phase of the machine safety lifecycle — from research and concept through to a global launch across 28 countries.
A critical step in the machine safety lifecycle
Pilz's Myzel platform serves three distinct groups managing machine safety: OEMs designing new machines from scratch, MEUs operating and modifying existing equipment, and third-party safety consultants — including Pilz itself — advising on risk mitigation. Risk Assessment is the critical module that unites them, providing a structured way to identify hazards and document safety measures across the entire machine lifecycle.
Fragmented processes across all three contexts
Safety teams across all three contexts were managing risk assessments through disconnected, manual processes — each using their own tools and workflows. This fragmentation created friction: hours spent on administrative overhead, transcription errors introducing safety gaps, and difficulty coordinating findings across teams and locations. There was a need for a unified approach that could serve all three user types seamlessly.
From contributor to lead
I joined the project in 2023 as a contributor alongside Federico, taking on research and concept work for the new user group direction. By 2024, as the project scaled and Federico's focus shifted to other modules, I took on full lead ownership — driving the UX strategy, managing stakeholder relationships, coordinating across multiple development teams, and owning the design end-to-end through to global launch.
- User research strategy and execution
- End-to-end UX across all features
- Stakeholder alignment and sign-off
- Cross-team design coordination
- Usability testing and heuristic audit
- Design system migration
- Figma, ProtoPie
- OOUX framework
- Heuristic evaluation
- Usability testing
- Journey mapping
- HLR review
Understanding the domain and the users
The first phase was about getting deep into the problem space. I reviewed existing research, examined the full engineering lifecycle, and led a research effort to understand how safety teams across all three user types actually conduct risk assessments.
User Research
Conducted interviews with experienced safety consultants who work closely with both OEMs and MEUs. This gave us indirect access to real user workflows without the constraints of direct client engagement.
Outputs
- Journey maps for OEM and MEU workflows
- Process flows documenting key stages
- Comparison of user type needs and pain points
- Recommendations for each stage of the flow
- Safety Design and Risk Mitigation concepts
Key insight
Safety teams across all user types shared the same core friction — but their workflows, team sizes, and levels of process standardisation differed significantly. The design needed to flex across all three without feeling like a compromise for any of them.
Setting the design direction
With research in hand, I led the concept development phase — translating insights into a coherent design direction validated with stakeholders before detailed design began.
Led a full HLR review with the product owner, consolidating research and concepts into a shared design vision. Presented to stakeholders and secured sign-off before moving into detailed design — ensuring alignment across business, UX, and development from the start.
The original gallery was a supporting feature built around 3D models. Research showed that for all user types, image-led hazard documentation was the primary workflow. I redesigned it from the ground up — drag-and-drop, multi-select, markup, tagging, sort and filter, full-screen tooling.
Developed landing page concepts for each of the six user personas within Risk Assessment, conducting interviews to explore how different users approach and manage assessments at different stages of their workflow.
Designing and shipping the product
The realisation phase was the most intensive — detailed design across all features, multi-team coordination, validation, and delivery. I owned the full design output and managed simultaneous workstreams across multiple development teams.
Rebuilt from scratch — drag-and-drop, multi-select, markup, tagging, sort and filter. Image-led hazard documentation became the core workflow.
A modular grid gave simultaneous dev teams clear boundaries — works for print and screen. Later adopted by the Radar module.
Reusable risk reductions across a tenant reduced manual re-entry and standardised how common hazards are handled across similar machines.
Completing a risk assessment carries legal weight. Versioning, status transitions, and a structured review step make that significance felt.
Validation
Conducted structured usability testing with 6 participants who regularly work with risk assessments. Led a heuristic audit reviewing key flows from both first-time and returning user perspectives. Findings fed directly into prioritisation for the launch release.
Design system migration
Collaborated with dev to migrate the module to the shared component library — focusing on clean implementation without overrides to support long-term scalability across the platform.
MVP launched — then kept evolving
The module soft-launched in May 2025 across 28 countries simultaneously. Post-launch, I gathered and analysed feedback from users in Ireland, Belgium, Poland, and France, which directly informed the next development wave.
What came next
Risk Assessment became the gateway to Safety Designer — the next major module in the Myzel lifecycle, which I began leading in concept phase in late 2025. The same research foundation and design patterns are now informing that work.
Impact
"Our launch of Myzel was a great success — thanks to your entire team."
Thomas Pilz
Ranked 2nd out of 96 nominated products across automation & industrial technology — determined by reader votes from users and industry experts.
What this project taught me
"Good UX in a regulated, safety-critical domain isn't about delight. It's about accuracy, confidence, and trust at the moments that matter."
The most significant shift over three years was moving from executing a defined brief to shaping it — leading research direction, stakeholder alignment, and design strategy across the full product lifecycle. Designing for a domain where accuracy directly impacts safety sharpened how I think about what responsible, user-centred design really means.