A software to serve any water utility in the world
Video from Qatium
Qatium aims to build the most innovative application for managing water networks, particularly looking at world-wide small utilities and underserved communities. We had the task to provide an accessible and performing user experience for virtually any user and any machine on the planet.
- How to build an Industry 4.0 software that can at the same time serve a majority of utilities that still use mainly analog means to manage their networks?
- How to make an application both useful and understandable to water experts, general maintenance technicians, and municipalities’ decision-makers?
- How to provide a seamless experience when internet connection is poor, when a computer has little computing power, or when the user is managing an emergency?
Opening a platform to third party contributions
Qatium decided to shift to an open platform in which anyone could develop added value features and make them available through a marketplace.
- How to define the new feature taxonomy, differentiating core functionalities from added value features?
- How to create an enticing user journey for developers and companies and encourage them to build add-ons for the platform?
- How to guide the emerging community of developers starting to build their projects on the open platform?
Defining product principles with the whole team
When I joined Qatium in 2022, the approach was to be opportunistic; building features to serve the most engaged users and get quick feedback. This enabled fast learning but took a toll on product vision and coherence.
- How to drive a successful principle ideation process within a strong dev-culture with little co-creation experience?
- How to define a set of bold, differentiating principles for a product that is still discovering its market?
- How to balance aspects such as collaboration & accessibility with privacy & secured environment in one coherent narrative?
Creating an evaluation framework for Civic Labs
Civic labs are research and experimentation institutions that facilitate collaboration among grass-roots organisations, individuals, subject matter experts and basically any agent in society to address social challenges. Within the Civicwise network we developed Civimetro, an evaluation framework for these structures.
- How to articulate the elusive value these institutions deliver?
- How to provide a standard evaluation structure with patterns to accommodate a myriad of lab typologies?
- How to simplify the method, enabling labs to perform auto-evaluations?
- How to serve the lab’s objectives of accountability and continuous improvement?
Co-creating an architecture for Galileo satellites operators’ software
Galileo is a European navigation system (alternative to GPS), and possible through a fleet of satellites. It is developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). Within the pharaonic Galileo Second Generation (G2) project, I led the conceptualisation of a new software suite for satellite operators.
- How to co-create the vision for G2 software with 15+ ESA stakeholders with a strong hardware background?
- How to shape a flexible user interface to accommodate anything from Gantt tools to alarm listings through graphical dashboards?
- How to create an easy to use design system that removes frontend workload for back end developers and guarantees uniformity across the suite?
- How to shape a multiservice structure to enable all vendors to develop coherently within the platform?
Understanding Blood donation in India
BloodLink was a social startup tackling blood shortage in India. In May 2018 a small team embarked on an Indian pilot to test the new value proposition: to connect companies and blood banks to organize blood donation camps.
I was the service designer and researcher in the team.
- How to carry out a very sensitive research with very little means?
- How to learn fast and read in between the lines of a different culture?
- How to manage high volumes of information from the myriad of donors, nurses, doctors and other stakeholders, in very little time?
- How to frame insights to make them most useful for a fast paced start-up without loosing depth?
More on this project: an article on what I learned about researching in India and another on the findings of the project.
Industry: several; B2B Corporate Social Responsibility & B2C health, volunteering
Training Latam Bancassurance executives in Design Thinking
Teaching user-centered methodologies at a big company, learning about their culture, and about the appalling user journey of the life insurance beneficiary.
- How to frame this practice so that it creates value and spreads in an organization with a traditional structure?
- How to ensure that, when the project is over, the business-as-usual doesn’t undermine the new initiatives?
- How to fit this new discipline in the structure of the company without creating a new silo?
Industry: B2B, B2C.
Digitalizing banking and its users for the XXI century
Banking is a highly regulated sector, and its digital interfaces must support quite complex processes. On top of this, the service offering hardly differentiates from one bank to the next, what reduces very much the capacity banks have of differentiating themselves.
How to design a digital experience so that it doesn’t look the same again, despite the sector restrictions?
- How to adapt the experience to the local reality of the user?
- How to adjust a legal language and complex content for a diverse audience, without loosing accuracy?
- How to create an easy, trustworthy, convenient and complete experience?
- How to create a conversation between company and user, that generates true value for both?
Industry: several; B2C mass market and private Banking.
A communication strategy for an organizational change
Change always hurts, also when it’s for the good.
- How to help employees of a big company to appropriate their future?
- How to communicate with impact in an environment saturated with information?
- How to design a communication strategy that adapts and endures in an organization in constant disruption?
Industry: B2B internal project.