Accelerating field operations with an intuitive interaction model
Enterprise / SaaS
UX/UI Design
4 months
Shipped
Manage The Product
Manage (acquired by Siemens) is an industrial-scale platform to manage lighting systems and energy consumption of a building. For Siemen's field engineers, the platform is the primary interface for bringing massive buildings "to life" at the time of construction.
Details
Web-based tool
surface
Product Designer
role - solo individual contributor
1 Product Manager∙1 Front-end Dev ∙2 Back-end Devs
team members
UX/UI ∙ User Testing ∙ Design System
scope
Problem The Commissioning Bottleneck
The legacy interface was a "wall of data" that lacked visual hierarchy and flow. Field engineers were forced to navigate a high-friction setup process where connecting fixtures was slow and unintuitive, leading to a 5-day commissioning lag per building and frequent installation errors.
Solution A Streamlined Interaction Model
I redesigned the core commissioning workflow, introducing a collapsible navigation system and a refined visual language. By balancing high-density data with a minimalist UI, the new model allowed engineers to process installations with significantly less cognitive strain.
Result A Faster Setup
The redesign cut the commissioning cycle from 5 days to 2. The new interface achieved 100% adoption among building managers, drastically reducing error rates during hardware pairing and saving hundreds of manual labor hours per project.
Impact
5
2
Building Setup Time
Accelerated the commissioning cycle by 60% through a streamlined interaction model.
100%
Commissioning Accuracy
Eliminated manual coordinate entry errors by implementing a direct drag-and-drop fixture placement model.
+25%
Screen Real Estate
Recovered through a collapsible sidebar, allowing engineers to navigate high-density floor plans without scrolling.
CONTEXT
Siemens is a technology leader focused on smart building automation.
and how do they do that? They acquired Manage, a tool that uses smart sensors to automate lighting and save energy in tech parks. By tracking motion and daylight, the system intelligently dims or brightens lights to cut waste.
During building construction, field engineers use the app to connect thousands of sensors to the digital grid. I was brought in to redesign the clunky legacy UI and simplify this setup process to make it faster and easier for the field teams.
PROBLEM
Scientists' & engineers' productivity was at an all-time low. Their tools & systems were slowing them down, delaying research.
Scientists & engineers were stuck juggling too many tools, delaying cancer patient care. This is what they were dealing with,
Waiting a long time for systems to process
Dealing with the cognitive strain due to tool-hopping
GOALS + NORTH STAR
To design a high-density industrial interface that feels as intuitive as a consumer app, giving the platform a modern visual/ui facelift while enabling engineers to commission smart infrastructure with zero friction.
Simplify Data Density: Transform a "wall of data" into a clear visual hierarchy that surfaces the right information at the right time.
Maximize Workspace: Prioritize the floor plan as the primary workspace by removing persistent UI clutter.
Reduce Input Latency: Transition from manual data entry to direct manipulation (drag-and-drop) to increase field speed.
Establish a Visual Language: Create a modern, high-contrast color palette and component set that works in varied field lighting conditions.
PROCESS + KEY INSIGHTS
I conducted contextual inquiries and interviews with computational biologists, machine learning engineers, and leadership to map disjointed R&D workflows and visualize a unified research ecosystem.
Key Insight 1: Fragmented Ecosystem navigating a scattered ecosystem of 12+ legacy tools forced constant app-switching, which disrupted scientific focus and slowed research progress.
Key Insight 2: Processing Bottleneck the legacy "one-task-at-a-time" system created a gap where expert staff had to sit idle while waiting for experiments to process, losing valuable research time.
Key Insight 3: Manual Insight Cycle relying on Excel exports and external tools to render data created a heavy lag between running an experiment and actually understanding the results.
SOLUTION
Explora, a scalable, systems-driven MVP consolidating legacy tools into a high-performance workspace that empowers scientists & engineers to conduct cancer research faster.
BRANDING
Logo inspired by the intertwining of the DNA strands, the unique makeup of a human. The 'X' in 'Explora' replaces the letter.
DESIGN
The Split-Workspace Grid
enabling parallel reasoning
This feature allows scientists to position the model viewer and code editor side-by-side, enabling them to examine complex protein properties while simultaneously writing modeling code. By unifying these previously separate applications into a single interface, it directly supports the insight that researchers reason in parallel and require high-density workspaces to maintain their scientific flow.
DESIGN
The Plotter
accelerating insights by visual synthesis
The Plotter allows researchers to load multiple simulation models and visually overlay results in a single, integrated environment. By replacing cognitively heavy Excel exports with at-a-glance comparisons, it solves the "Manual Data Fatigue" insight and empowers scientists to iterate on drug developments faster.
DESIGN
The Progress Bar & View Selector
eliminating research downtime
I designed a system to handle the transition from a synchronous to an asynchronous back-end. While the View Selector allows scientists to switch fluidly between active applications during a simulation, the Ongoing Tasks panel provides a global, bird's-eye view of experiment progress. Together, these features transformed a legacy 'one-task-at-a-time' bottleneck into a high-throughput environment where scientists can simulate and monitor multiple experiments in parallel.
A scientist always has a bird's view of the progress of his experiment simulations.
A scientist can write a drug experiment code while looking at the model to run it on.
REFLECTIONS
Need for a Deep Domain Understanding: To design for experts, you have to understand their world. By diving into bio-modeling science, I moved from just "translating requirements" to becoming a co-innovator who made complex data more actionable.
Learning the Art of Prioritization: Working as a solo designer taught me how to prioritize. I built a lean, 80-component foundation instead of a bloated system, allowing us to hit a tight launch deadline while keeping the platform scalable.
Designing to reduce Cognitive Load: Combining fragmented tools was about psychology, not just tech. By creating a "one-stop" workspace, I reduced the cognitive strain of tool-hopping, helping scientists stay focused on their research instead of their software.
WHAT I WOULD DO NEXT..
Introduce an AI-powered chat assistant
Biotech is one of the fastest growing areas where AI is being used extensively for research. Leveraging it, I'd focus on introducing an AI-powered chat assistant primarily focused on automating many of the daily tasks.
Explora's smart scientists and engineers lived happily every after
fin.