Construction Management Software

Story

The construction industry faces numerous challenges, including labor shortages, budget overruns, project delays, and safety concerns. An international company developed a platform that offers end-to-end solutions, connecting everyone in construction and enabling access to the latest technology built on a secure and reliable infrastructure.

Some enterprise-level customers requested advanced data customization enhancements; at that moment, the product lacked the necessary flexibility to give company administrators control over how tools and forms worked on a specific project and situation. Thanks to on-site workshops with said customers, a multidisciplinary product team gained valuable insights, which gave our company a better understanding of the problem to solve.

My role

I was the leading UX designer on the team and collaborated with other designers focused on other solution spaces on the product platform. My team was dedicated to data customization and how different types of customers consumed it. I was responsible for doing research (generative and evaluative), socializing findings to key stakeholders, ensuring we aligned with existing artifacts and design system best practices, and working on the design discovery to achieve the first publicly available build of the new conditional logic fields.

I collaborated with a multidisciplinary team, including product managers, engineers (backend, frontend, and mobile), QA Testers, and data specialists. Sometimes, this involved proposing new design system updates and ensuring we introduced consistent, research-based patterns.

Challenges

1. Limited access to real customers.

Access to end-users was limited due to tight schedules, security protocols, and dispersed construction sites, which made it hard to validate ideas early and often, especially for features with specific workflows like conditional fields. As a result, assumptions risked being based on internal expectations rather than actual user behavior. Reliance on indirect feedback increased ambiguity in design choices, and timely insights from real users became a recurring bottleneck.

2. Poorly defined collaboration process with other solution spaces.

Each solution space within the platform operates with different timelines, tooling, and priorities. This situation created friction when dependencies or shared components needed coordination, especially for initiatives representing a high-integrity commitment for the company. Cross-team decisions—especially around design patterns—often lacked documentation and consistency. Designers, in particular, had to advocate for coordination actively to avoid regressions or missed opportunities.

3. Mismanaged product roadmap.

The product roadmap shifted frequently, sometimes influenced by urgent leadership requests or other teams pressured to release on a tight schedule. Priorities weren’t always communicated clearly, leaving the team uncertain about delivery goals. This made long-term planning difficult and undermined team morale since aligning stakeholders on scope and timelines became a constant challenge. Visibility into future work was often vague, and improving roadmap clarity became critical to sustain momentum and ensure meaningful delivery.

4. Technical constraints and project complexity.

The platform’s architecture had not been designed for highly customizable forms, making implementing conditional logic features difficult. Every addition to form behavior risked affecting legacy tools or workflows. Backend limitations introduced edge cases that I needed to account for in the UI, so working within these boundaries required ongoing negotiation between product, engineering, and UX.

Solutions

1. Conducted moderated and unmoderated interviews.

I created research plans that combined moderated interviews with company admin users and unmoderated tasks through UserTesting and scripted prototypes. Moderated sessions helped uncover edge cases that weren’t obvious from internal testing, and unmoderated tests gave us fast feedback on comprehension and interaction patterns. These sessions also helped us drive confident design decisions throughout the process.

2. Documented recommendations about inconsistent patterns.

As we explored related features across the solution space, we noticed inconsistencies in interaction and visual patterns. To ensure scalability, I compiled a detailed audit highlighting these inconsistencies with proposed design solutions aligned with the existing design system. These efforts led to a better shared understanding of component usage and further tool standardization.

3. Proactive communication with other teammates and stakeholders.

I started by setting up regular check-ins, asynchronous updates, open documentation, and bi-weekly demos available for the entire organization or other solution spaces. That communication strategy helped surface blockers early and kept stakeholders aligned on priorities, so design patterns were frequently shared in advance to gather technical feedback before development started. Stakeholders became more engaged with the UX rationale and tradeoffs that helped solidify product expectations.

4. Design discovery of conditional logic features, along with other UX improvements.

I led the design discovery of the conditional logic fields by mapping key user goals and pain points. Early iterations explored different ways to surface field behavior and control visibility across customization processes. The final concept gave administrators a flexible but understandable interface for setting rules. In parallel, we reviewed and refined minor UX improvements that supported usability throughout the form experience on desktop and mobile devices. Users who consumed those customization rules and fields could fill their forms faster since we could keep the data as relevant as possible.

5. Proposed hackathon project to innovate how signature and table components could be used in safety forms.

To address a known pain point in the form-building experience, I pitched a hackathon project focused on reimagining how signatures and tables in a form worked. Recurring user requests and internal support tickets inspired this proposal. Teammates were interested in developing a POC for this, so together, we rapidly prototyped solutions that simplified data entry, improved mobile responsiveness, and introduced reusable components. The project gained traction and won first place, securing internal investment for continued development and, eventually, became a new initiative that my tool team could bring to reality.

Outcomes

Won 1st place in the 2024 hackathon, which allowed the team to get investment in that initiative.
Team stakeholders had a solid understanding of the UX direction for any product update.
Got documentation and alignment about some inconsistent patterns across the solution space.
Released to enterprise customers the conditional fields functionality (Closed Beta, then General Availability).