I was the lead designer of this project, producing almost all of the sketches, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs.
Integrate both insights from user research and product requirements into designs
Ensure consistent visual design across all screens - and make it responsive
Jul - Sep 2022 (8 weeks)
Internship project - team of 2 designers and 2 product managers
Figma, Mobbin
With the Smart Building Portal, you can directly control your smart windows and see their live status anytime. Whether you want to change the tint of your windows right now or schedule it for later, both are just a few clicks away.
"It should be like a 2-3 click thing... but it's not." - Alex
Alex is a building manager who is responsible for all the daily operations of a residential building. This building also has View Smart Windows installed, which provide comfort by going from clear to tinted. His responsibilities include responding to customers' requests, accommodating for special events, and making sure the windows are functioning properly. He currently uses the View Building Manage app (VBM) to manage and control them.
A quick audit of VBM reveals a whole host of usability issues that prevent Alex from performing his tasks efficiently. Without proper organization and not enough visual representations, Alex needs to spend extra time to complete his tasks that are heavily location-based.
VBM desperately needs solutions to its usability issues as well as a design uplift in order to give building managers like Alex better support to complete their tasks. This leads to the question -
How might we make key information more accessible and organized in order to allow building managers like Alex to perform his tasks more efficiently and provide better customer support?
Some buildings can be real big and tall. That's a lot of windows.
User interviews with multiple building managers helped me gain more insight on the specific problem areas of VBM, but also on how they used VBM in general.
For someone like Alex who manages a 4-story residential unit and receives a lot of tint change requests everyday, his specific pain points are:
Previously created schedules are sometimes really hard to find - they could only be sorted by creation date and start time, neither of which were helpful
Schedule creation is not robust enough to handle the wide variety of day-to-day scenarios
No visual representation of any sort means extra time spent on making sure that tint changes and schedules are affecting the correct windows
First, I had conversations with the product managers and defined the scope and features of the redesign. Then, I got into sketching new potential solutions.
I experimented with representing the schedules in different ways, like calendar or card view, and even putting them on a map. The main focus was to try to give the user a visual representation of where their schedules are taking place in the building.
When wireframing, I found it difficult to lay out all of the information without the screen being too crowded. For example in the calendar view, if there were multiple schedules happening at the same time, they would have to be squeezed together.
As a result, we decided to revisit the old designs from VBM and use that as the starting point, slowly removing elements until only the essential information was left. The new designs bear many structural similarities, but were built using a new design system.
Now rebranded as the Smart Building Portal, building managers have improved support as they handle their daily operations with their smart windows.
Redesigned dashboard with live status information
New navigator feature and filters to assist users with location-based struggles
Robust forms for schedule creation or changing tint immediately
View and edit upcoming schedules for window tints
Responsive mobile designs for the dashboards
This project taught me the importance of research insights and product requirements in design projects. It was through conversations with direct stakeholders and product managers that helped me define the scope of the project and keep me on track.
