Overview
Tri-Tech Pinnacle Group is one of Canada’s leading roof and building envelope consultants. They sought the creation of a facilities information management system so their client property managers can keep an eye on the overall conditions of the properties they oversee. This software will make it really easy to track the leaks in roofs, view the roof areas through an interactive birds-eye view of the property and track annual inspection reports.
The prototypes were designed in Figma over the course of a few weeks. A design system, component library and responsive page layouts were provided to a third-party developer for handover.
The Core Problem
Tri-Tech had previously kept all of this information in a collection of downloadable PDF reports. The problem was that this made all the scattered information difficult for clients to keep track of, search through, sort, store photos and site layouts, view expenditures and manage remotely. What they needed was a FIMS software that could do it all in one place. I joined the Atlas Apex Roofing software development team as an outside UX contractor to design the site map, interfaces, interactions and prototypes for hand-off.
The Solution
Working closely with the vice president and other consultants at Tri-Tech, I identified the typical pain points of their old way of managing all this information and gathered a wish-list, of sorts, that would make the consultants' job easier and make their clients happy. At some point, a "Clippy"-style character was considered, but ultimately the interface was designed simply enough for such a feature to be deemed frivolous.
We leveraged their existing roof area data to create a vector tool that tracks the size, material, core sample data and overall condition. We centralized their inspection reports into a single place. A leak tracker was created to show the history of when leaks were reported, when they were fixed, and how much it cost.
The data needed to also be visualized in such a way to prompt the user (manager/operator) to take action if needed. A roof's age was displayed as a "draining battery". Urgent things like "condition poor - repair soon" needed to be displayed at the forefront and the client would be able to request service directly through the dashboard.
We also designed a tool that would parse an uploaded report into tabled data within the site. This data supported the "Health Check" indicator as an easy way for the user to get an overview of a report before reading through the entire data form.
The property dashboard, showing an overall health check, cost summary, and property boundaries
The building dashboard, showing inspection reports, budget, and the building's boundaries
The roofing dashboard, with an interactive roofing plan, leak tracker, and budget