Buildings Management App

Product Design

SCOPE

My father makes and manages buildings and since I like to visit his construction sites, I detected a need during the work. Task organization and Building progress tracker.
So I created a possible software app solution for the day-to-day life of the collaborators and my father.

First Impressions

All the information taken for this project has been consented to, and for this reason much data has been withheld, as well as names and more personal information of those involved. Other important detail is that this is a study case for a possible software solution where many business topics should be detailed, but of course not in this Product design case.

RESEARCH

First Iteration

First of all, after a visit to the construction site, I observed and talked to the employees involved, why?
To answer questions that were central to the development of this project and of course to get to know them in order to understand what their user profile is.

Question every detail...

I started with simple, direct questions to understand what needs I could cover and to understand how easy users are with technology use.

Do you own a cell phone? If yes, what kind of phone do you have?
How comfortable are you with using technology in general?
Are you familiar with using smartphones or other mobile devices?
Have you used any specific construction-related apps or software in your work?
How do you currently keep track of your tasks, schedules, and project updates?
Have you ever used any digital tools or software for organizing your work?
Would you be interested in using a technology-based system to help organize and manage your daily tasks and workflows?
What kind of features or functionalities would you expect from a technology-based tool for organizing construction projects?
What are the potential benefits, in your opinion, of using technology to streamline construction workflows?
Are there any concerns or challenges you foresee in adopting technology for organizing your work?

Some results ( I certainly don't want to bore you)

Keep in mind two details, in the answers I put the most important quotes I received and that these results were used to understand what degree of complexity the product could have.

1. Do you own a cell phone? If yes, what kind of phone do you have?

Employee 1 – “Yes I have, a Samsung”

Employee 2 – “Yes, an Android phone by Xiaomi”

Employee 3 – “I have an Oppo.”

2. How comfortable are you with using technology in general?

Employee 1 – “I deal well with technology, but of course sometimes I get irritated with some tools.”

Employee 2 – “I am not 100% autonomous with technology, my son saves me most of the time”

Employee 3 – “I use a few things on my phone, but the ones I do use I just had to learn from someone and then use them well. But as the saying goes, when you don’t know, you don’t invent.”

5. How do you currently keep track of your tasks, schedules, and project updates?

Employee 1 – “Honestly, my memory is still up to date and the years of experience make me perform my duties in a more coordinated way.”

Employee 2 – “Sometimes I use a notebook, at the beginning of a project it is common to point in a copy of the project and much of the detail remains in memory.”

Employee 3 – “We usually have more complex notes noted on the building’s floor plan and otherwise everything is kept from memory.”

7. Would you be interested in using a technology-based system to help organize and manage your daily tasks and workflows?

Employee 1 – “Certainly yes and could help to don’t miss any detail.”

Employee 2 – “Depends on the ease of use and whether the lack of experience would not bring more confusion.”

Employee 3 – “I believe it would mainly help to maintain consistency between employees and site managers in the various details, but of course, the technology should have some ease of use or some kind of simplified training to use it.”

Findings of the first iteration

The employees showed that they were interested in organizing their functions in some way, but it was taken into account the complexity, presentation and ways of using the software on their equipment.

Key points:

defined personas

After the research phase and to understand each member’s archetype, I elaborated two templates based on the data I obtained.

Goals

In order to start the software design and as a 1st step, I decided to just work on the Mobile version dedicated to admin users. Later on, should be designed the Admin dashboard panel for the desktop in order to manage permissions, restrictions, and also the appearance of the actual Mobile app.

After talking with my father about what parameters would be needed to better organize the mobile application, we chose a few that I will present here: ( The branches of each topic refer to the first phase of the project)

Information Architecture

In this phase, according to all the data I gathered, I structured the information with a simple aquiterature adjusted to the users’ needs. For this I used a sitemap to organize the app. ( Made in Figjam)

Pen & paper wireframes

This was the first draft I made to start visualizing the idea I was going to insert into the app.
Here we can see some of the intended use cases.

Combine all with UI

This was the last step of the first iteration of the project. Here you can see how the mobile app design was conceived, only with the necessary requirements.
(The project is still in development)

Prototype - 1st release

Completing the First Steps

With this first release I was able to understand the complexity of creating an app with these parameters, the need to simplify functionality given the requirements and to be able to fulfill the needs from research to the final product. This type of project requires constant consultation of the data found and investigating the best usability practices in view of the low understanding of technology on the part of the employees.

Next steps

This is a first release of the mockups with all the necessary requirements, so the next steps will be to test the 3 key functionalities, View documentation, create and analyze tasks and observe the progression of the projects. With these results it is necessary to iterate and present the necessary solutions.