Industry:
Smart buildings, proptech, B2B and B2B2C marketplace
Role:
First in-house end-to-end product designer & de facto PM (research, design, PRDs, issue/story prioritization)
Internal collaboration with:
CPO, product manager, CTO, BE & FE engineers, customer success, marketing, sales
External collaboration with:
Office space managers, team admins, part-time external UI design consultants
Tools & systems used
Figma, Sketch, Shortcut, Notion, Dovetail, Maze, Mixpanel, Intercom, and more.
TL;DR
Native app for office space access, bookings, and team administration
My role
As the first in-house product designer, I was responsible for the end-to-end design of our native app and took over the designs and the work that had been done by an external design and tech agency.
The product ecosystem included the native app (iOS & Android), internal tooling, and hardware.
I built the design function from the ground up, hired the next UI designer, led two external part-time UI design consultants, and served as the de facto design lead.
Impact
Selected impact of feature work:
Redesigned phone permission flows, error handling, and system status, cutting customer support contacts by 70%.
Significantly reduced time and effort for team admin tasks.
Designed and shipped a new meeting room check-in feature, reducing no-shows by 50% and significantly improving office space utilization.
challenge.
Unifying ecosystems: Web app, native app, third party & hardware integration
The core challenge was designing for a fragmented ecosystem — not only of tools and data, but also of user roles.
On one side, we had to unify streams from native apps, hardware systems, and third-party integrations into a single source of truth for our customers.
On the other, we needed to account for overlapping but distinct use cases: Tenants who had their regular office and needed the app for building access and meeting room bookings, and Orbit customers without a fixed office space who used the app to gain access to the whole network of workspaces.
error handling.
Customers often couldn’t enter a building or room and didn’t know why: Redesigning permissions, digital key status & error handling
Problem
The original app experience for space access was a primary driver of user frustration and customer support contacts.
The core issue was a system-wide lack of clear feedback. Permissions screens were confusing, and when an unlock failed, there were no clear errors and mitigation options, leaving the user feeling uncertain and powerless.
Solution
Implement a multi-faceted solution for user-empowerment and error mitigation
Redesigned and unified permissions hub
Redesigned digital key states
New user-facing error states and handling
A new scalable, reusable “info card” component
More informative system states via updated icons
Outcome
A 70% reduction in support contacts
Customer satisfaction increase
Old
The original design suffers from several classic usability issues:
Fragmented experience: The user has to navigate between multiple, separate screens ("Digital key," "Permissions," "Settings") to understand and manage a single concept: their access.
High cognitive load: The sheer number of toggles, lists, and separate screens creates a confusing and overwhelming experience. It's not immediately clear what the most important information or action is.
Unclear status & feedback: The UI lacks clear, at-a-glance status indicators, even mixes status indication, making it difficult for a user to feel confident about their current access permissions.
New
clearer unlocking doors in-app.
Redesigning the “entries” screen for clarity
Old
The problems: The original entries screen was a flat, unorganized list. While functional for a user with only one or two entry points, it was not a scalable solution. Users with access to many spaces across different buildings, this single list would become incredibly long and difficult to scan, leading to frustration and wasted time.
During field research, I saw customers who used this in-app unlock function struggle to find the right entry button to tap. This was an incredibly frustrating user experience, as it directly tied to getting physical access to a building or a room.
New
The solution & rationale: I redesigned the screen with a clear information hierarchy to improve scannability and support users who had access to many locations.
The new design introduces logical groupings based on proximity ("Nearby") and by building ("Palermo House"), allowing users to quickly find the specific entry they need. This new architecture provides a scalable and much more intuitive experience.
After implementing a “favorite location/base” feature, this screen became even more tailored to each user (see below).
simplifying interaction with preferred locations.
Favoriting a location
Favoriting a location feature expanded: automatically added the related entrances
New
Technical constraint
My preferred interaction would have been that the user’s most used entries appear automatically on top. This was however not possible as we didn’t track individual users’ entry usage. It was something we considered to potentially roll-out at a later stage.
Outcome
Favoriting a location resulted in 80% of users setting one up within the first week, leading to significantly fewer taps when accessing entries.
core navigation redesign.
Redesigning the home screen for clarity and action
Old
The problems: The original home screen had several critical usability issues. Primary actions were hidden in a hamburger menu, reducing discoverability. The main floating button combined "search" and a "scan" feature that had no real-world use case, causing user confusion.
New
The solution & rationale: I redesigned the navigation to be more intuitive and action-oriented.
Bottom navigation: I replaced the hamburger menu with a standard bottom navigation bar, making core features like "Bookings" and "Entries" immediately accessible.
Clear primary CTA: The confusing search/scan button was replaced with a clear "Find space" call-to-action, which better reflected the user's primary goal.
Feature deprecation: We deprecated the unused scan feature, simplifying the experience and removing a point of confusion.
big small things.
Empty states
The empty state was consistent with the ones we created in the new web platform for admins.
Full case study available on request — email me!
