“Buildable Area” Project — Hackathon Edition

Project Overview

 

Project Duration

October 2021 — 3 days

My Role

UX Designer

My Team

Margaret W. — GIS Data Analyst

Matt C. — Lead Software Engineer

Mike I. — Software Engineer

Programs

Figma, Jira, Slack, Airtable, Airflow

Key Skills

Rapid concept ideation, team collaboration, visual design, wireframing, project management and public speaking

 

Transect | Find Your Project Site

 

Transect is a GIS software company that created a mapping tool to improve the process of finding land for Solar, Wind and Real Estate projects.

The location of a development project is crucial to a project's success.  Looking at data on a map alone cannot guarantee that you choose the right site. Land developers need to know to where exactly is a safe and efficient place to build. Transect is building a platform that automates land selection and provides current data on site conditions in seconds.

I work as Transect’s sole UX designer, responsible for coordinating all user research, design direction, wireframing and testing. I work very closely with the Customer Success, Marketing, Sales and Development teams.

What is the problem?

 

We give our customers great information about all of the various constraints on their proposed development sites, but we don’t finish the equation - we tell them which plots of land are ideal, but aren’t giving enough information to tell them where on these plots is ideal. Users need more detail.

Users are land developers who are trying to find an ideal site to build on

 

Users need to know where on a track of land is ideal to build

 

Users are exporting our data to other software to get better detail

 

“Our customers want to see a heat map of high impact areas so they know which areas to go under/over or route around”

 

Purpose of the Hackathon

 
 
 

The output of this 3 day hackathon will be the MVP of the Buildable Area based on user research and my user personas. I would lead the demo our MVP to the company.

Things I needed to deliver by the end of the 3 days:

  • Give users a way to customize and generate a buildable area within a parcel (plot of land) or set of parcels.

  • Give users a way to quickly add parcels together to form a large enough buildable area.

  • Give users a way to keep track of what has been added/selected.

  • Give users a Buildable Area where they can see in detail where on the map fit their criteria for building their project.

 

Outlining goals and dividing up roles

 

User Path

 
 

I knew we had limited time. Communication was crucial. I outlined a flow for a user path to create a map layer that would overlay with the parcel layer to reveal the sweet spot for a site location.

Our workflow board - a Jira board in real life!

Four Pieces of the Puzzle

 

Based on our user needs and the deliverables for the hackathon, I came up with four pieces that needed to be built:

  • A request form

  • An ability to quickly select parcels

  • A ticker window

  • A color for the NDA map layer

Grab & Add

 

One of the two biggest initiatives in this project was creating an ability to allow the user to quickly select parcels while keeping track of the total acreage the had accumulated. With the current ability being very tedious, we wanted a new and exciting way to grab these parcels. I came up with Quick Select, a toggle that activated a “select” mode where any parcel the user clicked on would be added to a growing queue.

Of course this had never been built in our app so it required extensive cross-functional collaboration between design and development to achieve what I had envisioned.

 

Keeping track

 

Users needed a way to keep track of what parcels they were adding to their project area. I came up with a ticker window that tracked acreage totals, parcel information, county information, and “Save as Project” CTA.

Visual cues

 

The last task was to come up with the Buildable Area map layer that easily contrasted the net developable area from the excluded areas. And all while having the parcel boundary layers on top of that in addition to having to account for light and dark base map layers.

First iteration

Iterations

 

I realized that the contrast wasn’t enough and the parcel body saturation wasn’t as important as the parcel border. Users needed to see through the parcel polygon to the Buildable Area layer below to confirm the overlap, and by definition the developable area.

I darkened the blue NDA layer and removed the parcel polygon body

Final iteration

 

Demo Day

 

In front of our Product Committee and full Transect leadership, I demoed the MVP of the Buildable Area.

Next, because we got great reactions from our Product leadership, we felt comfortable rolling the MVP out to production to actual users.

“I am very thankful for the level of detail that is provided in response to customer service inquiries and the speed is frankly unparalleled”

— User Response

Conclusion

 

This was my first hackathon and working as the sole designer meant I shouldered almost all the ideation for this project. I loved the problem we took into the hackathon and I wished we could’ve had more time. I want to improve the Buildable Area toggle flow and the map layer UI.

Working that closely with the development team was a very collaborative experience that taught me the importance of clear communication and to be a better teammate.