2023 – 2026
Product
Building a PropTech SaaS platform to accelerate the construction life cycle
CLIENT
Podium, originally part of Lendlease Digital
SCOPE
Strategy to Pixel
ROLE
Senior Product Designer on the UX team
Founding Designer at Podium's incorporation
Overview
FREEPIK STOCK
The construction industry and projects are complex. Multiple disciplines and experts work on fragmented processes and tools with long feedback loops and high stake decisions are made with incomplete information. Podium is a SaaS platform built to bring clarity to that complexity, enabling developers, architectures, engineers to explore feasibility studies and work on a shared platform, reducing waste and costly misalignment.
How might we disrupt the construction life cycle through technology & design automation?
Introduction
As a Senior Product Designer on the UX team, my role spanned across multiple stages of the product lifecycle, from client discovery and strategy to actual execution. Instead of a single feature deep dive, this case study showcases a curated cross-section of my responsibilities, each paired with artefacts that demonstrates my thinking and contribution.
PODIUM
01
🕵🏻♀️ Discovery
As Podium seeks to address multiple gaps across the construction lifecycle, the user pain points are often nuanced and contextual. I led and supported discovery workshops with clients like JTC, Lendlease and Sunway to surface operational challenges, uncover inefficiencies and identity opportunities we can address.
REVISED PROJECT CREATION FLOW (MID-FI)
FOR VALIDATION WITH SUNWAY
PROPOSED E2E FLOW FOR SURBANA JURONG
02
📌 Definition & Prioritisation
Feature requests were constant, coming from customers and internal teams to meet evolving business needs. My role extended beyond pure design execution to shape what was being delivered.
I am involved in cross-functional collaborations to clarify problem statements, define scope and prioritise initiatives. This also meant identifying patterns across features and ensuring frameworks made sense to ensure scalability and coherence..
MASTER END-TO-END FLOW
03
☁️ Frameworks & New Patterns
As part of a 0-> 1 product team, I helped to establish foundational framework and the product architecture that shaped how the product evolved.
In parallel, I designed new interaction patterns in response to emerging needs. It was essential that the solution addressed immediate need while fitting coherently with broader architecture and pattern library.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
INTERACTION HINT
CONTEXTUAL TOOLBAR
* * *
04
☁️ Blue Sky Concepts
Blue sky concepts often emerge from subject-matter expert colleagues ideating off client's feedback. I helped translate these early-stage ideas into testable concepts, concrete enough for user validation and clear enough for stakeholder prioritisation. This work predates the current wave of AI tools and relied on my personal synthesis and rapid prototyping.
Concept 1: Scenario Generation
Users can generate different site layout options based off on inputs and automatic calculations.
SCENARIO GENERATION PROTO
OPTIONS FOR TESTING
Concept 2: Handoff Report
Users can prepare handoff on Podium directly,
with linked components that auto updates from canvas
HANDOFF REPORT MOCKUP SCREENS
Concept 3: Gamification of Site Layout
Users go through site layout with more of a gamified twist,
using fun to ease the technicalities of use
GAMIFICATION
05
🎨 Constant Enhancements
Ongoing product refinements were driven internally and by customer feedback. The team always looked out on elevating the overall product experience through iterative enhancements.
The constant challenge was balancing speed and impact. I needed to keep improvements lightweight for quick implementation, while strategically grouping relevant refinements to deliver more meaningful upgrades.
Example 1: Improving the Podium plugin for Autodesk
The cognitive load on user for the original plugin was unnecessarily high
IMPROVED UI EASES LOAD WITH BETTER TYPE HIERARCHY AND METRICS
SNAPSHOTS OF THE UI EVOLUTION
Outcome
S$20.4 Million Funding led by Autodesk
Other investors incluide Schindler & Lendlease.
Read more in the news.
"The user interface is good and clean. It is a delight to use."
-XXX, Godrej
Learnings
Doing it all, doing it well
—-
Applying UX principles in an unfamiliar context
The construction industry has vernacular that UX design borrows heavily from. But beyond that, many of the processes and technical knowledge are opaque and challenging to grasp. This is a challenge I constantly face, but lean on SME colleagues for. One good thing is it removes a lot of my personal pre conceived biases.