AspenTech Subsurface Intelligence™ (ASI)

Three questions to the project team

What was the particular challenge of the project from a UX point of view?
The subsurface engineering industry relies on fragmented tools that force geoscientists to switch contexts, reconcile data manually, and validate outputs across disconnected systems. These workflows span years and involve complex datasets, 3D modeling, and simulations that inform high-stakes energy decisions. The core UX challenge was not just integration, but reducing cognitive load while preserving scientific rigor, unifying workflows without oversimplifying complexity. Experienced users were accustomed to legacy systems and equated simplicity with loss of control. The challenge was to shift this mindset while creating an intuitive, efficient platform that maintains trust and precision for experts and is accessible to the next generation.

What was your personal highlight in the development process? Was there an aha!-moment, was there a low point?
Highlight:During early validation, industry experts described the experience as “easy to follow” and “simplified—you don’t need to be an expert to use it.” This breakthrough came when we realized simplification wasn’t about removing complexity, but organizing it better. By restructuring workflows and using progressive disclosure, complex tasks became intuitive without compromising capability. Leveraging different services to integrate data, automation, and visualization also played a key role in enabling this seamless experience.
Low point: The design process, specifically user validation required rethinking long‑established processes and helping experienced users let go of deeply ingrained habits.

Where do you see yourself and the project in the next five years?
ASI will evolve to bring together humans and AI agents across geophysics, formation evaluation, petrophysics, geomodelling, and reservoir engineering. Over the next five years, we envision ASI will transform upstream workflows—reducing modeling time from days to hours by integrating AI and automation. Combining domain expertise with generative AI will enable up to 90% faster analysis, real-time collaboration across disciplines, and more intuitive, guided decision-making. ASI will significantly improve the speed, quality, and consistency of subsurface insights, unlocking solutions to complex challenges that were previously impractical due to time and workflow constraints.