Motili Projects

Web-based software Product design User interface User experience

Motili is a web-based software platform that helps users manage orders, maintenance, repairs, and data for residential and commercial HVAC systems. A portion of Motili's business comes from project-based work, such as maintaining and repairing HVAC systems in all residential buildings on military bases. The internal project team assists contractors with scheduling work, ordering parts, and fielding general questions. I was tasked with helping this team become more efficient and utilize the core platform more effectively.

"I spend the majority of my time copying data from one platform and pasting it in another platform."

goals

Reduce the teams reliance on a third-party application, SmartSheets, that required pay-per-seat licenses and doubled the process for internal users to manage data.

Create functionality in Motili’s core software that helped the Projects team be more efficient.

Begin to define a scaleable design system for Motili’s core software, that could be utilized in other sections of the platform.

research

To kick off the project, I interviewed 30 members of the Projects team to understand their daily activities and reporting requirements. Some general questions were sent before the interviews to provide context:

  • What are you do on a weekly basis?
  • How often are you using Smartsheets? What are the functions you feel it helps with during your day-to-day?
  • What is the main purpose of the reports Are you sending them to others for review? Are you discussing them as a team?
  • How often do you log into our platform? Generally, what information are you logging in for? What information do you feel is missing?

To better understand how users interacted with the platform and identify pain points, I job shadowed a small subset of the Projects team and reviewed a sample of their reports, both in SmartSheets and documents kept locally on their computers.

My research found that existing platform functionality did not align with the user's needs, and the team was not adequately trained on it. This led to inconsistent processes and the use of multiple third-party software tools, including Smartsheets, to store data. While Smartsheets was used primarily for reporting, most of the information reported to leadership existed in Motili's software but lacked consolidation and visualization.

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Examples of individual reporting documents and the current Project section of Motili's software.

"Users spent 30% of their time on administrative tasks, 15% on internal reporting, and the rest on their intended function of managing communications and issues from a contractor."

Working with a Senior Product Manager, we met with the Director of Operations and VP of Engineering to define improvements to the existing Projects section of the core platform, including:

  • Easily update multiple work orders based on client or contractor communication.
  • Easily access specific work orders by project and view all communications with contractors.
  • Export weekly and monthly reports for clients.
  • View high-level project statistics to ensure it is on track and relay this information to clients.

I created wireframe concepts and held multiple reviews with the team, including Project Managers, to streamline functionality, define the overall page structure, and improve upon the existing core platform.

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Concepts evolved based on conversations and engineering feasibility. Red text represents notes taken during meetings.

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In collaboration with the Product Manager, we defined the pages and actions to visualize the user's process.

design

I designed a system based on what currently existed but improved upon the platform's style, accessibility, and reusability. I collaborated closely with the engineering team to create and refine the system, which was also used to implement new features in other sections of Motili's core software.

Users were defaulted to an empty dashboard and they could build their work-specific view to complete their work.

Data could be filterable by client, contractor, and date. High-level project stats and project-specific work orders were displayed on subsequent dashboards.

Each bulk action required additional data. The reporting functionality allowed for two file types, one editable.

The design components and styles were repurposed in other sections of the platform.

end result

Prior to release, formal demos took place with a subset of the Projects team in a test environment. Documentation and test data was provided for the group to test in a sanbox and feedback was collected. Additional demos were scheduled with the remaining Projects team, and presentations were made during all-staff meetings and to the executive team.

Ongoing feedback and questions were fielded directly through a public Teams channel once the dashboard was released. The final solution made the team more efficient, reducing the need for additional team members. The reporting aspect and reliance on SmartSheets remained an issue, so conversations and sessions took place with executive leadership on how to reduce unnecessary reporting and allow clients to self-serve their reporting needs.

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