Geospiza

Overview

After creating a tool to help cities and communities plan for disaster and climate change events, Geospeza realized that a similar tool was needed for the private sector. The tool our team developed is called Geospiza PATH. It is a web-based platform that assists companies in creating disaster plans with live and dynamic climate data. The platform provides an adaptive planning based drawing tool, giving users the ability to create plans that automatically update based on the live, dynamic climate data.

Team

Product Designer: David Donnell
Project Manager: Sarah Hamma
Front End Software Engineer: Rob Allsop
Staff Engineer: Jason Musgrave
CTO: Craig Kalick

The Project

The web application Geospiza PATH provides companies with property risk analysis, helping them detect weather and climate related risks to private property. Geospiza PATH models real time data to provide accurate risk models empowering the user to take measurable action to reduce risk. The platform gives tools to risk managers, sustainability teams and asset managers to take action in reducing climate and natural hazard risks. Geospiza PATH identifies risk hazards like floods, drought, hurricanes and wildfires, and it evaluates the potential costs and benefits of actions taken to mitigate risks.

Problem Definition

Create a planning and risk assessment platform that processes and displays live climate data, and assist the user in creating an adaptive path risk mitigation action plan.

My Role

I worked with a talented team of Engineers and a Product Manager on the Geospiza Path project. I was the sole designer and was relied upon for all user experience, interaction, interface and icon design. Additionally, I acted as an Art Director for Geospiza, making user experience and branding design decisions for the redesign of the Geospiza website.

Audience

Our audience includes companies with 400+ properties and/or supply chains in high risk areas needing to create long term plans for risk management and mitigation associated with climate change.

Our primary users from these companies included risk manager, sustainability teams and operations departments.

Constraints

• Visually display live data that shows real time risk to property

• Provide users with a tool to draw plans based on the adaptive pathway model

• Allow users to visualise and export their data and plans in order to present it to their teams and stakeholders

• Design and develop the MVP within a tight timeline of 6 weeks in order to present to potential customers for partnership funding

• Create a design system that included detailed data visualization.

• Make the program simple and intuitive while displaying very complicated and dynamic information.

• Take the adaptive planning methodology and create a program that helps users draw adaptive pathway models.

• Give users the ability to make confident long-term plans for climate and disaster risk mitigation using the adaptive pathway models.

MVP Feature Set

• Import property data points from .csv files

• Display .csv data points on a map

• Show a map visualization of rising sea levels, flooding, and storm surge risks

• Create adaptive pathway drawings and plans based on the data points and visualization

Future Features

• Group and manage data sets

• Manage pathway model files

• Group data sets on the risk visualization map

• Set multiple active metrics that include timeline, rising water levels, and global temperatures

• Set active alerts based on metrics

• Platform inbox alerts and email alerts

• Ability to compare and contrast pathway models and individual pathway journeys

Design Process

Our goal was to produce an MVP and a customized high-fidelity prototype so that Geospeza was able to present to potential customers in order to gain funding partnerships to continue with product development.

Research

A major part of the discovery process included partnering with a consulting company that executes plans for climate risk management and mitigation. Through this partnership we learned a great deal about different techniques that are used in creating plans and decisions. We decided to focus on the adaptive pathway model. We found that a consulting company was pulling data from a wide range of sources and using many spreadsheets, documents, reports, and map drawings in order to create the final plan. This was a very manual and time consuming process, and we saw an opportunity to pull all of this data into one source and keep the planning, and mapping in one location.

The product manager and I conducted research together and collaborated in a Google Doc in order to document our findings, consolidate the adaptive pathway technique, and define a common language for our product. We studied multiple plans built on the adaptive pathway model and kept these in the master document so that the whole team could easily see our process and be able to read it in a digestible way.

We co-created with our team, by having everyone draw their own idea of what an adaptive pathway model could look like and describe the process in their own words. From these drawings and processes we created a quick list of what features needed for the adaptive pathway modeling portion of the application. This feature list was our main focus for the MVP.

Design

I made it a point to be in constant communication with the engineering team to avoid any major surprises in the development process. I enjoy working with developers and make it a point to keep them involved and a part of the design process.

I created wireframes to brainstorm for the general layout, navigation hierarchy, filing system, adaptive pathway model and more. I presented my ideas to the product manager, CTO, and engineers to discuss technical feasibility and decide on the path forward.

Once I had a general idea of the layout and structure, I created mid-fidelity mockups in Sketch and created prototypes to show the flow of the designs. While creating the mock-ups, I simultaneously work on the design system and uploaded it to InVision so that the developers could access it and see the CSS specifications easily.

Geospiza had some brand guidelines with a logo, some colors and fonts but no real design system. I saw a need to standardize this in order to make development faster and my job along with the job of future designers easier and more efficient. With a tight deadline, and being the only designer I decided to start the design system out with a tool built for Sketch called UX Powertools. While they build a structure for the components in Sketch I tailored the elements to Geospiza, created custom icons.

Geospiza sales prototype

I presented my designs and prototypes to everyone on the team, either on a one on one basis or in a meeting. I discussed the designs and flows and took note of feedback and finally polished up my designs to be high-fidelity and dev ready.

Geospezia was able to meet their goal of having a working MVP and multiple customized high-fidelity prototypes and were able to present their product to 3 enterprise companies. They have yet to secure their partnership funding but are continuing to present to potential customers.

Retrospective

I really enjoyed working on this team, and it was the first time I was able to work with developers in person which I really enjoyed. As a designer it was really helpful to have the developers’ input while I was designing and to be able to give feedback to the developers throughout the development lifecycle. This was the most difficult project I have ever worked on and the success of the project weighed heavily on our shoulders. We all were venturing into a new project that we have never seen successfully pulled off, and I would consider it a success. In fact, we threw a party to signify all of the hard work and effort was worth it. I am very thankful to have such a wonderful and supportive team for this project, and can’t wait to continue to challenge and learn from each project I work on.