FacilityTEAM
Role
Senior Designer/Developer, UI/UX
Date
Sept 2013 - Mar 2015
Tools & Coding
Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, AutoCAD, WordPress, HTML5, LESS CSS, AngularJS, Git
Introduction
FacilityTEAM was a cloud based application for facility and maintenance management teams. It was a start-up company comprised of three others and myself from our previous company with 15-20 years' experience in facilities management software.
Our goal was to re-invent how facilities management was done focusing more on process management and team communication.
*Disclaimer
What was cool in 2013 is not neccessarily cool by todays standards and I am having to dig deep into my archives to locate samples.
The Problem
How do you take years of development and knowledge and build a new product with new technologies and get it to market as quickly as possible?
The previous Windows based software that we all worked on had 16 modules from space management, asset management, work orders, preventative maintenance, leasing etc..
To The Phones (a.k.a Skype)
FacilityTEAM was 100% remote and for the first few weeks, maybe months we spent a lot of time coming up with ideas and researching technology. The company name wasn’t even set in stone for several months. After we had our key features and some designs laid out we located a company that specialized in rapid development to get us going.
Key Features
Multi-client database
Client branding
On-boarding admin tools
Form designer
Report designer
AutoCAD integration
User specific modules (forms and reports)
Communication tools
Dashboard Design
The Dashboard went through many alterations as we developed and determined what the user should be presented with after logging in. It initially started with a tile based design showing what you had access to. Once we developed the task based system and messaging those became more of the focus. This allowed the user to see what had been assigned to them so they could perform their daily tasks.
Scrolling/swiping to the right would then display the user’s specific modules. Clicking on a top level module would then display the forms and reports tied to that module.
Designing The Dashboard
The Completed Dashboard
Form Designer
Another goal of FacilityTEAM was to be able to dynamically design and build forms within the application. This would allow clients to have custom forms specifically for their needs. The advantage to taking the time to designing a form designer was that in the end you did not have to be a developer to build new forms and modules.
Note: The form designer was only accessible to FacilityTEAM staff.
All forms within the application would have the same surrounding components: search and action buttons, sidebar navigation to other related forms, documents and activities.
Another unique aspect was that reports were automatically generated in the documents section when a form was saved for historical purposes. Within the activities section every transaction was also saved and it would also display other relevant information that may be tied to the item you were looking at.
Designing The Form Designer
Laying Out a Forms Components
The Completed Functioning Design
Conclusion
FacilityTEAM as a whole was a huge learning experience from: working remote and agile teams, responsive UI/UX design and development, new coding languages and so much more. Every day there was something new to figure out and seeing a project come to life is truly amazing.
We knew starting this company it was going to be a risk and very ambitious. I believe we built a great product but in the end it unfortunately did not make it to market.