DueBox
DueBox is a B2B SaaS tool for construction teams to streamline communication and stay on time, on budget.
Trigger
The biggest headache for people working in construction is no doubt communication.
Communicating between the office and the site and coordinating a billion details for a building in a fast-paced environment is extremely challenging. Insufficient communication leads to overdue tasks, drawing errors, costly iterations and terrible delays.
I wonder how can I leverage my experience in the construction industry to help my teams to be successful.
Problem Space
How can we streamline communication for construction teams to stay on time and on budget?
Research
Sorting Ideas
To better understand user painpoints from different perspectives, I interviewed 6 professionals with both design and non-design backgrounds in the construction industry.
We did a card sorting game and followed with a “how may we” brainstorming exercise to creatively generate possible solutions.
Research Takeaways
Through the card-sorting exercises, I was able to not only categorize painpoints, but also to find the pattern in all the opportunities.
Personas
As interior designers would be the primary target users, I chose the “Designer” persona and worked to satisfy their goals and frustrations.
Design Principles
Construction-focused
Focus on construction project, progresses and important data points from the industry to improve users work flows.
Simplicity
Empower users with simplified but thoughtful interfaces that ensure them to accomplish tasks and goals effortlessly.
Accessibility
Empower the user with accessibility and responsive design to different screen sizes and serve them in different environments.
Style Guide
The Bauhaus movement, one of modern history's most influential design movements initiated the conceptual understanding of architecture and design.
I chose the Bauhaus theme as the style guide to communicate between the architecture world and the digital world in a sense that is familiar to interior designers as well.
Hi-fi Designs and Solutions
Effective Data Visualization
The home dashboard is a hub of data visualizations that provide user with comprehensive progress information at first glance. User are empowered to quickly prioritize their tasks and goals and stay on top of the games.
Smart File Sorting
Unlike regular file lists, DueBox focuses on essential data points that matter to construction projects - project phase, location, market sector, storeys and last updated time - to always keep the user informed when they are sorting.
Once the user goes into any project folder, the system provides a list of roles from the team as everyone has a role to play in the project, and every project is a cross-functional collaboration. This leads users to an express lane toward the file they are looking for.
Task Management
The task list and all shared working files both live in the DueBox system. Users can create tasks and invite team members to collaborate and track progress together as the construction project progresses.
Replace Paper
When working on architectural projects, printout drawings in various sizes are with the designer/architect every step along the way. In the post-pandemic era, we embrace digitalization to replace paper and boost efficiency, as well as to be more mindful of the environment.
The Notepads feature allows users to bring in working drawings, generate digital sticky notes, add comments, sketch on top and easily share with teams without going through the hustle of recognizing handwriting, scanning paper or combining PDFs.
Usability Test
After testing on 4 users - designer, millworker, contractor and project manager, I’ve collected insightful feed towards the next revision.
“I would want a dark mode for this.”
Participant 2 - Female 35
“Can I download the app to my ipad or iphone so I can easily show drawings to the contractors?”
Participant 2 - Female 26
“How do I know if we need to purge the folders or not, because I don’t see how much storage we used.”
Participant 2 - Female 34
“This is nice. It would be great if they can tag me when I need to pay attention to certain files.”
Participant 2 - Male 55
Milestones
Through usability tests, I also pleasantly discovered the improvements in the user’s current workflows:
DueBox takes 3-5 fewer clicks to locate a file in 3 different studio systems.
On average DueBox saves 3 minutes of the time in coordinating project progress.
9 out of 10 participants expressed a positive attitude toward the notepads feature and want to use less paper in the future.
Work & Learn
The DueBox is something I would want for myself and my team after working as an interior designer in construction. My fellow professionals seemed happy when they review my design. Here are a few things I’ve learn from this journey and would try to do a better job next time:
Figure out what pages we need, why we need them, how they can support each other, then we can design the homepage as it’s the summary for all the pages.
Test out more wireframes before go into hi-fi. It will help me save time, energy, dig deeper and faster with the “whys” for user needs.
Component everything for rapid revision.
Don’t try to achieve everything on one page and definitely do the best.
Data-heavy dashboard design is fun!