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Autodesk

Reducing material waste by improving communication

Project Statement

Autodesk’s construction management tool promised end-to-end project handling. All the features were there, but the most crucial, the root of the system, the document library, was unable to perform the tasks its complex user base required. In light of that, customers were creating their own libraries, requiring additional headcount to create and manage the system, or worse yet, leaving Autodesk for more nimble competitor solutions.

❋ Role

Product Designer—led concept development, qualitative + quantitative research, testing, and facilitated workshops. Deliverables included: wireframes, visual design, prototypes, persona maps, user journeys, and stakeholder presentations.

❋ Task

Improve communication, maintainability, and consistency on large scale construction projects by improving the reliability and functionality of the document management library.

❋ Success Metric

Customer retention and acquisition.

❋ Team

Product Manager, Customer Relations Rep , Product Designer, Design Manager

Evaluation of Existing Product

To begin, I completed a Heuristic Evaluation of the existing product to identify major UI/UX incapabitiabilies in the document library. Then, I hosted a remote workshop with the Document Library team (engineers, product manager, product director, design manager) to identify areas of growth within the product to build team alignment.

Research

The team visited active construction sites and conducted remote calls to get a feel for the problems at each stage of the construction life cycle. We also took a look at some similar consumer-based products. I used Observational Research methods, such as “fly-on-the-wall,” to conduct these studies. I also held 1-1 interviews with various users of the product (Architects, Construction Managers, Civil Engineers) using a Motivational Interviewing modality to learn more about their experience in the application.

Feature estimation and planning

After a thourough analysis, theme ideneitfyication, and consolidation of findings, I presented the following key areas of improvement. Then, my Design Manager and I worked to facialited an estimation workshop where key stakeholders rated the important of each feature based on their area of expertise. This allowed all voices to be heard and built trust and buy-in in our roadmap since we were all building it together.

Key Features

The following MVP feature mock-ups were created by myself, leading functionality, and my Design Manager, who applied the final aesthetic to my proposals.

Results

In many cases, refreshing the visual system alone was enough to get salty customers re-invested. There was an appetite for even more improvements and a bit of skepticism on delivery. Tagging and navigation was still a confusing experience, and most important of all, home-baked solutions are hard to leave behind. Some of the low hanging fruit were implemented right away, the rest were demo’d at Autodesk’s yearly conference to get a further gut check before more investment.

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