Works

Scope:

UX Design

Year:

2022

OVERVIEW

Synspective builds advanced satellite and geospatial mapping technology. The sales team was struggling to get traction with the first version of their index mapping platform because it was too dry and technical. Over a six-month timeline, my team was tasked with finding out why the initial platform failed, identifying the right target audience, and redesigning the entire experience to make complex mapping data highly accessible.

PROBLEMS

Overwhelming Interfaces: Non-expert users like real estate planners and investment managers felt completely overwhelmed by the raw index data. They found it difficult to extract reliable answers for their specific business needs.

Low Engagement: The original platform was built as a basic functional viewer where users could only look at raw index maps over a selected area, giving them very little reason to stick around.
Highly Technical Workflows: The service relied on incredibly complex data pipelines and algorithms. The challenge was finding a way to simplify the interface without watering down the deep analytical tools that data scientists required.

MY ROLE

I was a solo UX designer on a cross-functional team that included a UX researcher, engineers, data scientists, and a marketer. I co-led our research phase by running discovery workshops with our internal applied scientists to understand the technical limitations of our data. From there, I mapped out user journeys, built the new information architecture, created lo-fi storyboards to align the team, and designed the final high-fidelity dark-mode user interface. I also designed a targeted beta landing page to attract and screen our initial testers.

DIRECTION

We shifted the platform from a passive data viewer into a structured project workspace. The new direction split the application into two distinct user flows so data experts could customize complex datasets while non-experts could easily search, filter, and visualize geospatial index layers for their own use-cases and business plans.

SOLUTIONS

User Storyboarding: Built step-by-step storyboards to map out and test key interaction points with potential customers before committing to code. This walkthrough was essential for prioritizing functionalities and gave developers and stakeholders a clear look at the overall UX, which helped us confirm and affirm our core value proposition early on.

Contextual Project Dashboards: Designed a main workspace where users can organize their maps by project, view saved index tables, and manage custom data parameters cleanly.

Simplified search and info modals: Built an intuitive search function with clear suggestions. We added simple descriptive modals that explain what complex indicators, like Global Horizontal Radiance (GHI), actually mean before a user adds them to a map.

Technical Pragmatism: Partnered with engineers to reshape the map-drawing tools around rigid code limitations, protecting the launch timeline without hurting the user experience.

Strategic Design Library Leverage: Adopted IBM’s open-source Carbon Design System. Utilizing a thoroughly documented framework bypassed component creation overhead, built immediate trust with front-end coders, and rapidly expedited fully functional prototypes.

OUTCOMES

Unified Visual Identity: All visualization mechanics and core page layout structures were codified as the organizational standard.

Compressed Time-to-Market: Enabled internal product teams to sketch, prototype, and scale new SaaS products rapidly for quick iterations of sales demos.

LEARNINGS

Pragmatism Over Purism: Good UX design in technical sectors means adapting visual aesthetics to the needs of both engineers and users alike when necessary to align with live backend processing latencies and API constraints.

Systemic Execution: Using an existing design system like IBM Carbon over building a custom UI kit preserved our tight launch window and focused our efforts entirely on information architecture and usability.