From Tracking To Managing
Background
Maintenance units at a major electricity company manage hundreds of safety deficiencies across facilities, ensuring regulatory compliance and operational safety.
- My Role
- Product designer
- Project Manager
- Ruth Ben Haim
- Developer
- Yulia Markovski
Starting Point
The finance team reached out on behalf of senior leadership (division and department heads) requesting a control dashboard to monitor maintenance operations across different regions.
Discovery
Getting Up to Speed
The brief was minimal and filled with technical terminology I didn't understand. To get up to speed quickly, I used custom Claude Skills I'd built to prepare for the kickoff meeting.
- ‘Kickoff-Meeting’ skill to help me structure the discovery session effectively.
- ‘User-Research’ skill to help me plan the user interviews quickly.
Understanding the Request
Leadership identified resource waste in maintenance units and low performance scores. They wanted a dashboard to track performance in real-time and alert units about issues so they could correct course.
Going Deeper: Talking to Domain Experts
I requested access to Maintenance Managers, the domain experts who understood the technical details. In those conversations, a different story emerged: managers were struggling with inefficient, overwhelming workflows. They needed help with field monitoring and work planning. Only then could they improve scores and use resources more efficiently.
The Shift
A tracking dashboard for executives wouldn't solve inefficiency at the operational level. This required rethinking who the primary user should be. Maintenance Managers became the primary persona.
Reframing the Challenge
Design a product that provides Maintenance Managers with real-time visibility into their operations so they can make better decisions and use resources more efficiently?
Design
Solution
The solution needed to function as an operational work tool, not just an investigative dashboard.
Layout for Work, Not Just Display
Research insight
Maintenance Managers need space to manage hundreds of deficiencies and organize field work, not just view summaries.
Implementation
I moved KPIs to the left sidebar, creating vertical workspace for task management.
KPIs moved to the left to maximize horizontal screen space. This lets users see critical information without scrolling and provides more workspace for planning field operations.
Progressive Clarity
Research insight
Maintenance Managers use scattered Excel files and email threads where critical information gets lost and is difficult to track across hundreds of deficiencies spread across 9 Work Centers.
Implementation
I studied how managers work with Excel and email to understand their decision-making process. Then I designed a flow that guides them without overload.
Shared Visibility from the Bottom Up
By giving access to multiple organizational levels, the product creates shared ownership and reduces bottlenecks.
Access across three levels:
- •Work Center Managers - see their center's status at any time, access polygon data, and make deployment decisions independently
- •Maintenance Managers - monitor performance and plan work across all 9 Work Centers
- •Senior Leadership - monitor performance scores without micromanagement
Recommended visit order with clear status indicators enables work center managers to make deployment decisions independently.
Regional performance scores give senior leadership operational visibility without micromanaging day-to-day decisions.
Measure
Measuring Success
To track whether the solution works, we defined 3 KPIs.
- Overdue deficiency reduction - measuring decrease in overdue items.
- Inspection Completion Rate - tracking progress toward annual inspection goals.
- Field team response time - measuring how quickly teams are deployed to critical areas.
