Timeline
Feb - Nov 2024
Industry
Construction Tech
Role
Founding Product Designer
Team Members
me +
4 founders (GM, CPO, CTO, CMO)
Development team
2 CX Researchers (discovery phase)
Overview —
Our venture team, a blend of internal experts and venture builders, worked directly with a mega-scale construction development to identify opportunities for modernising the construction process. Operating from within the parent company's tech studio, we tackled an industry where up to 30% of $11 trillion annual spend is lost to inefficiencies.
Through extensive research and an iterative customer development process, we developed a digital solution leveraging AI and data-driven insights to automate project reporting and enable faster, more accurate decision support for project owners and managers. The venture has since spun out into a standalone startup, dedicated to scaling this solution.
Challenge & Pivots —
Initially, we were tasked with addressing inefficiencies in the construction industry by building a tool to improve project visibility and communication for senior stakeholders - with a remote monitoring key feature (via a digital "control room" solution). The mothership's hypothesis was that better top-level reporting would empower leadership to make informed decisions and reduce delays.
However, as we engaged with users, we uncovered a different reality. After hearing the same thing over and over again, we found that what project teams really struggle with is:
❌ Manual data collection, verification and reporting consuming their valuable time
❌ Critical decisions are based on outdated or incomplete information
❌ A lack of effective communication between stakeholders, which leads into other problems and bottlenecks
❌ Unforeseen disruptions causing delays and budget overruns
These insights highlighted a disconnect between the initial hypothesis and the on-the-ground realities faced by project managers. By leveraging a customer development approach, we pivoted our direction to focus on solving the most urgent pain points—ultimately creating an AI-powered solution that addressed core challenges in reporting and decision-making.
Approach —
Interactive walkthrough of Axiom's customisable home and reporting flow (contractor and project reporting templates)
Key Design Decisions —
🎯 Role-based insights
We discovered through our research that project directors, site managers, and executives all needed different lenses on the same project data. I designed a customisable KPI Library system that could serve each role's unique needs while maintaining data consistency - an essential requirement when dealing with high-stakes construction decisions.
🤖 Trust-building automation
One of the bigger design challenges was introducing automation to an industry that’s still heavily reliant on Excel and paper reports. I approached this by first automating their most time-consuming tasks, then designing easy and transparent ways to showing the AI's reasoning and manually verify data. This progressive disclosure approach will help build trust and keep users in control of critical decisions that could impact multi-million dollar projects.
🔐 Complex permissions architecture
With the complex ecosystem of players within a given construction project, it was an intricate challenge of designing permissions across that ecosystem. I carefully mapped user journeys and hierarchies, to ensure executives could access high-level insights and confidential information while project managers could work with detailed site information, all within the same platform.
💡 Intuitive yet approachable AI
While AI adoption still varies widely across industries, the construction sector can be particularly hesitant to embrace new technologies. For the AI copilot feature, I wanted to experiment beyond traditional chatbot interfaces while still maintaining familiar interactions. I incorporated example prompts and a prompt library into the experience to ease skepticism and demonstrate the system's potential.
Get instant insights with the AI copilot and prompt library
Create forecasts for project completion and get ahead of delays
Choose which data you see and how you prefer to see it
Get alerted to patterns and verify with remote monitoring
Learnings —
Challenging Initial Assumptions → Pivoting from a top-down, nice-to-have solution ("build it and they will come") to a user-centric platform that tackled real pain points ("meet them where they are") was key to driving customer adoption and building positive sentiment.
Iterate, Test, Iterate Again → Iteration was at the heart of our process—we tested every aspect of the product, from AI feasibility to workflow integrations with dummy data, and refined at every stage. We never sacrificed quality for speed but knew what the right balance was, when.
Building User Trust → Trust is earned, not given. Demonstrating the platform’s value through small wins early on was critical to gaining customer confidence and stakeholder buy-in.