Inteligent Building Case Study

Problem to Solve

Create a fully integrated and automated intelligent building system that allows users to manage the building, modules and rooms. The previous building had no automated solution and didn't use any other systems — all activities related to research were performed on paper, tracked manually.

Users

People not related to IT — scientists, animal care takers, building managers, husbandry supervisors — who are familiar only with regular IT software like Word, Excel, Google Drive and email. Often people in older age.

Annotated requirements documentation with handwritten review notes — Detailed requirements documentation provided by the business side, reviewed and annotated with the team.

Team & Role

I started the project as the main contact to the business, in a hybrid role of Business Analyst, UX Designer / UI Designer. As the project entered a more advanced phase, I was supported by an additional Business Analyst, Interaction Designer and UX Researcher.

The design team worked in Kanban, while the developer team worked in Scrum. One design representative was always part of the Scrum meetings, participating in daily standups, planning, demos and retrospectives.

Design Process

We started working closely with Business Analysts on the business side. At the very beginning they provided very detailed documentation with requirements. Our main goal was to understand the current solution, its constraints and issues — so we conducted many interviews with business BAs and regular users, and did some shadowing on site: observing scientists' daily work, the tools they used, and the issues they ran into. We needed to match the business needs with these findings.

Application map showing navigation between home, alarms, history, animals, status and operation modules — Initial application map, mapping out the core navigation and modules.

Next, we created the initial application map, user flow and sketches. The goal was an MVP that met core user needs: quick, efficient, intuitive and easy to follow. Due to technical constraints we chose a web-based solution over a native app, inspired by Material Design. The touchscreen app needed to follow the brand style guide and stay minimalistic and elegant.

Hand-drawn sketches of the room control module with temperature, humidity and lighting controls — Early hand sketches of the room control module.

UI & Interaction Design

User interface design was based on Material Design, with some exceptions. Initial interaction design was created in InVision as a fully clickable mockup. When developers decided to go with the Vuetify.js framework, the UX/UI and interaction designers made the most of the components and patterns it already defined.

Wireframes of the husbandry module showing charts, room status and alerts — Wireframes for the husbandry module.

Clickable InVision prototype of the room panel shown on a tablet — Clickable InVision prototype, tested on tablet.

Usability testing: following the UCD approach, we tested the solution regularly with users. The results were satisfactory — the app had positive feedback and was easy to follow and intuitive for users.

We collaborated closely with developers throughout, making sure high usability of the final solution remained a goal shared by every stakeholder. A design representative participated in every Scrum meeting.

Final Product

Here is the final product design. The mockup was improved with feedback from usability tests applied, along with some minor changes to the user interface.

Final tablet UI showing room temperature, humidity, pressure and airflow trends over time — Final tablet UI: room module trend view.

Grid of four final tablet screens showing module overview, room detail, event log and lighting controls — Final screens: module overview, room detail, event log and lighting controls.

Next Steps

Our next step was to create a dashboard (web app) that allows you to control, manage and administrate the building settings — a separate, longer story.

Grid of dashboard web app screens for managing building tasks, room plans and notification settings — Early screens of the management dashboard: tasks, room plans and notification settings.