Trip Sheets
Pason Systems • Sr. UX Designer
January 2024 – June 2025
Tripping refers to the process of removing pipe from a wellbore during drilling operations. Mud is used to maintain pressure while the pipe is removed.
A Trip Sheet is a document that records both pipe and mud displacement, identifying any abnormal mud losses or gains that may signal unsafe conditions.
UX Practices at a Glance
User-Centered Research
Direct field visits to understand real user needs and pain points.
Collaborative Development
Close teamwork with product stakeholders and developers.
Design Improvement
Improvements made to modernize the product’s UI style and UX workflows.
Iterative Process
Repeated prototyping and refinements based on user feedback.
Original Tile View
Original Table View
Trip Sheets Before Redesign
Pason’s Trip Sheet product struggled to gain traction for years. Initially, regulatory trip sheets were paper-based. This was prone to manual calculation errors and poorly suited for an industrial environment.
Pason’s first digital version, the Tile View, simplified the user interface but still required printed reports. The next digital version that followed, Table View, aligned better with regulatory formats but felt less user friendly.
Despite these efforts to improve Trip Sheet reporting, adoption in the field remained low. Users were divided between the two versions, forcing Pason to support both UI formats for years.
Pason engaged UX in 2024 as part of the redesign project to help assess user needs and address key pain points. The goal was to combine the simplicity of the Tile View with the report-ready format of the Table View.
User-Centered Research
In February 2024, I visited rigs in Texas and Oklahoma to gather feedback from drillers.
My initial research discovered that users liked the Table View’s spreadsheet-like UI but found it lacked real-time trace data and had a steep learning curve.
My research also uncovered that the Tile View displayed real-time data clearly and had intuitive settings, but required printing reports for a full overview.
Real photo of me out in the field collecting user feedback
Collaborative Development
Using a user-centered, iterative approach, I collaborated with product stakeholders and developers to redesign the Trip Sheet. My goal was to simplify workflows and reduce cognitive load to digest the interface while still maintaining regulatory compliance requirements.
Iterative Process
I conducted ongoing field testing, returning twice to validate workflows and layouts. While I had concerns about visual complexity, drillers consistently confirmed the designs met their needs effectively.
Design Improvements
Key improvements included big text used for key data values, a split screen for table data and action buttons, visual priority given to key actions such as zeroing the individual fill and pausing or running the flow of mud using Tank volumes as visual ques, and a new graph to highlight mud volume discrepancies.
UI styleguide choices made during my development of the Pason Rigside UI stylegide in earlier Pason projects were carried into the Trip Sheet screen as well. For example, Tables were given alternate row colouring and plenty of white space to increase legibility. In addition, clickable UI components such as buttons, scroll bars, dropdowns etc. adhered to the minimum button size requirements for Pason’s touchscreen hardware.
Final mockup of the new Trip Sheet
Trial and Early Adoption
The redesigned Trip Sheet launched in a November 2024 field trial, earning a 9/10 average rating. Positive feedback led to an early 2025 release, successfully blending Tile View simplicity with Table View detail for a more intuitive, adaptable tool. The result was a more intuitive, efficient, and field-adapted Trip Sheet.