Simplifying smart waste solution: Deciphering user needs and triggering the redesign journey.
Project Type
Redesign Smart waste dashboard
Role
Product Designer
Duration
3 Months
Team
Product Owner, 3 Developers, 2 Data scientist
Overview
As a Product Designer at Hailo_digital_hub, I've had the opportunity to work on various projects, but I'm particularly excited to share a significant journey - the complete redesign of Smart waste solution dashboard. In this case study, I will provide an in-depth exploration of the design process, unraveling the 'why' and 'how' behind the transformation of smart waste dashboard experience.
Context
SMART WASTE Analytics is a powerful web-based business intelligence tool designed to revolutionise the way businesses and organisations conduct waste management. Developed by Hailo Digital Hub, the tool provides a comprehensive solution for collecting, analysing, and reporting waste data. SMART WASTE Analytics enables companies to make smart decisions and manage waste more efficiently.
The problem
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The current status of dashboard only allows the fill level of the bins to be displayed in a way that is impractical for larger numbers.
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Due to the statistics area, which only refers to individual bins, no analyses can be carried out by the user.
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In addition, no information relevant to the ESG report is identifiable. A report on the amount of waste generated is time-consuming and cannot be prepared individually.
How might we ?
Revamp of the dashboard to reduce the complexity of analyses which will enable users to understand their waste production and make informed decisions. Which may also lead to increase in adoption rate.​
User Interviews and Card Sorting:
I along with my product manager and the customer success team conducted more than 20 user interviews and analysed the qualitative data.
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We did interviews to understand various workflows of their business requirement from our product while creating reports and what their pain points with the existing design.
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We also did internal interviews with customer success to uncover recurring pain points.
Core problems we identified
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Identifying the relevant information is not easy.
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User's do not understand how to extract data and use it in the reports.
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With so many waste stations its not easy to keep track of bin's fill level to schedule cleaning.
The objective of interview was to understand how informed decisions user can make with the current dashboard
Pain Points
By synthesising user feedback of current dashboard, analysing data from user research helped us to build primary use-case to tackle.
The pain points of users were majorly about not understanding the information .
Key Insights form User research
These are the primary use cases that we identified as a core problem to solve for the first version of Dashboard.
Katrin@Waste Manager
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Wants to see trends and patterns of waste generation.
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Wants to see how much waste is generated every year.
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Wants to see total waste generated for all buildings.
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I want to view data based on waste type.
​Johnathan@Environmental Officer
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Want to see waste data in real time.
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want to ensure the data in the report is always unto date.
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want to have the report in various format.
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Want to integrate ESG report with the realtime data.
Competitive Analysis
Due to lack of direct competitors, I then studies different organisations working for the same cause and observed their system behaviour, navigation flows and UI.
BrainStorming
I and my PM mapped out our goals for the new dashboard of how a dashboard can include analytics as whole which can help our different types of users as a whole.
User stories
Me and my PM created some user stories to ensure the focused solution for the problems.
Core problems we focused on
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Overview of waste generated by all Facilities.
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Overall WasteTrends and patterns of waste generated by all Type of waste.
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Amount of waste generated by each waste type.
Introduced Design System
Since we decided to revamp the entire product I created a small design system to ensure the design stays consistent and efficient.
Validate and Iterate
I started exploring various data visualisations for the different metrics and scalable layout. Validated these with the in-house support team.
Major Challenges​
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1. Balancing simplicity with functionality is crucial to prevent overwhelming users with too many options or technical details.
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2.Designing intuitive and visually appealing data visualizations that convey information effectively for users to understand patterns, trends, and insights without overwhelming users.
Solution
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1. Explored different types of charts to make sure data visualization can be easy and readable to a non technical person.
2. Bar chart was one of the most used and easily understood with a funnel chart which elaborate the situations with different types of waste, seemed to be the best solution to understand data.
Final Design
Some UI decisions I made while Creating design system
We revamped the dashboard with different types of features including data visualization, real time updates, custom reporting, waste generation by waste type for user to understand data and make informed decisions.
What we achieved MVP SMART WASTE Analytics which provides solutions for collecting, analysing, and reporting waste data to manage waste more efficiently, reduce environmental impact, and achieve sustainability goals.
