Context and Challenge
As the company grew rapidly, managing ship maintenance projects became unsustainable. The process involved multiple teams and outsourced companies without centralized communication.
The Core Problem
The extreme reliance on Excel spreadsheets and isolated tools resulted in a loss of control, missing data, and, consequently, million-dollar losses after the financial closing of each project.
The main business and design challenge was translating complex processes—which were being simultaneously mapped by an external consultancy—into a unified platform. The scenario required caution: since the teams had already undergone exhaustive process engineering interviews with the consultancy, we faced the hurdle of not causing user fatigue with new, lengthy research sessions. We needed to be extremely surgical in our Discovery phase to build a functional MVP.
Visualization of the Old Process
My Role and Processes
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Led the Product Design Strategy As a Senior Product Designer, I partnered with and mentored two Junior UX Designers alongside the Product Manager, guiding the process from Discovery to prototype delivery, structuring the product's progress into actionable modules.
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Navigated research constraints To avoid user interview fatigue, together with the client and the Product Manager, we determined that our initial focus would be absorbing and translating the technical Discovery conducted by the external consultancy. Thus, we focused our energy on building an MVP to quickly test feasibility and usability with users.
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Adapted processes to shifting scopes As the scope constantly expanded, I implemented the Double Diamond framework per platform module. This facilitated communication with stakeholders regarding how the design was progressing step-by-step.
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Conducted targeted immersions I held specific interview rounds with key teams (shipyard, construction, and finance) to ensure the nuances of daily operations were accurately translated into the new interface.
The New Experience
The New Experience
Business Impact
The time to create a GMUD dropped from 2 hours to just 30 minutes, aided by a new draft-saving function that prevents data loss.
Incredible agility. Visualizing data that previously required opening three external spreadsheets is now done in just a few clicks.
Optimized simulations and projections. Reports that used to take hours became configurable dashboards generated in 5 minutes.
Spread
sheet
Complete elimination of spreadsheet use. Full adoption of real-time tracking via smartphone and desktop.
Project Lessons
01 / LEVERAGING EXISTING DISCOVERY
We prevented user research fatigue by swiftly absorbing and translating the technical Discovery already completed by the external consultancy.
02 / MODULAR DOUBLE DIAMOND
Breaking the design process down into short cycles based on functional modules gave us extreme adaptability to handle a dynamic and ever-growing software scope.
03 / TARGETED FIELD IMMERSION
Mapping and experiencing the actual cross-platform routine (desktop and mobile) among the shipyard, construction, and finance teams ensured the product's adoption and operational success.