Adapt to simplify
a product research case study
Directly collaborated with the CEO and Expertise Team to plan, prototype and deliver design for emerging decarbonisation AI for the construction and manufacturing industries.
Adaptis
AI Carbon Reporting
A touchpoint for decarbonisation efforts in a keystone industry with a large carbon footprint, Adaptis offers users an interactive AI with huge potential to inform and empower developers and property owners on their capital planning and decarbonisation journeys.
At its inception, decarbonisation data would be obtained by the AI through active engagement of users with the software to enter hundreds of data points about building construction, material and use. Subsequently, reports were time-consuming to generate, and the workflows were impossible to scale to an organisation with hundreds of buildings in its portfolio. Product Design needed to deliver a user flow and front-end as well as a product strategy to address these problems early, but also be able to be rapidly built, shipped, and tested in the real world.
make it easier for developers to do better on every metric—human, financial, and environmental by combining carbon, cost, and constructability analysis.
Role & Goals
As the sole designer for Adaptis, I had ownership over user research, system design, end-user workflows and the creation of a simple design language the product could grow from first release. The greatest challenge was to find a way to meet two seemingly conflicting goals:
1. Decarbonation reports required hundreds of data points - they were difficult to collect and very time-consuming to input - to be accurate and useful
2. Design needed to be technically possible, easy and fast to rapidly develop a usable solution for the R1 of a complex engine, still missing many tested Agentic features [ie: requiring a lot of user interaction and input]
Target Audience - Building Owners & portfolio managers, Decarb Consultants and specialists
My Role - UI / UX / Product Design
The Team- CEO, CTO & UX / UI / Product design, Decarbonisation Engine Experts
the design process
research
the idea & the tech
the market & competitive analysis
the roles and workflows of users
ideate
the technical scope & limitations
the system hierarchy and needs
the user flow
refelct
technical review
measures of success
future iteration
extract inights
frame the problem
define persona
articualte the goals
blueprint
the wireframes
the worlfows
the style guide
the dataflow
lead with results
As a designer, my passion is to deliver user systems that put technology right in people's hands, guiding them through systems that are usable and transparent to them.
The proposed workflow for Adaptis was very linear, with users manually adding hundreds of data points to a project the AI would use to run assessments and generate accurate reports.
My observations and knowledge of user behaviour, as well as key points from user interviews, were the driving force behind my recommendation that the product flip this flow - letting users see low accuracy results based on the AI's existing knowledge of standards and averages, and using increasing accuracy measurement to motivate users to add and change relevant data. The flow also highlighted the need for key features like uploaders and document management
Early flow design needed to account for existing limitations - for example, accounts could initially only be created by administrators within the organisation and were then shared with customers. Design needed to account for these limitations while also anticipating rapid change.