Urban Data Exchange

Overview

Launching a start-up that enables the sharing and access of real-time IoT data to help solve city challenges and support strategic decisions.

My role

Product Designer
User researcher
UX/ UI designer
Workshop facilitator
Brand designer

Timeframe

Oct 2020 - May 2021

Description

The Urban Data Exchange (UDX) is a digital platform that enables the sharing of data, but also demonstrates the value of data through exchange of case studies and stories between cities, across the UK and globally.

A lack of urban data sharing is currently holding back cities and urban infrastructure providers to make the right planning and investment decisions. UDX is aimed at mitigating the current barriers to sharing of commercial and public data, for both data providers and data consumers. It simplifies the entire sharing process including the curation of useful datasets, the creation of license agreements, and the management of revenue from data transactions. UDX aims to be core to driving new innovation around data.

Phases of the process:

Timeline:

Explore the context

In this phase, we aligned the team and gained a shared understanding of the project vision, principles and objectives. We identified barriers, dependencies and opportunities across use cases. We achieved this through user interviews, desk and market research, use case and partner exploration.

Partner interviews

We interviewed a member from each partner organisation to capture and understand who they are, what they bring, their hopes for the project and any concerns. It was very important to be aligned from the beginning of the project, meaning we could effectively set expectations and address any concerns.

Below is a summary of the four partners and how they perceived UDX at the early stages of the project:

Alignment workshop

We ran an internal alignment workshop to:

Playback the partner insights
Meet the team
Clarify everyone’s roles
Discuss our hopes and fears
Create guiding principles
Future proof our use cases

Use cases

The discovery phase focussed on 4 use cases each of which involved a subset of partner organisations:

EV Charging
Exploring how data from Charge Point Operators (CPOs) could be shared with local government and councils to inform infrastructure roll-out and improve services.
Flexible Energy
Exploring data sharing around flexible energy assets including solar panels in schools, and social housing heating and power.
Data Catalogue
Exploring how UDX could integrate with the OASC data catalogue and MIMs compliance
Digital Twin
Exploring how the Heathrow digital twin could benefit from the integration of additional shared data, plus also provide data to UDX.

User interviews

We conducted a total of 10 user interviews:

3 developers
2 data providers
3 local authorities
2 electric vehicle (EV) owners

Journey mapping

The diagram below demonstrates the as-is journeys for developers, local councils, larger authorities, data providers and airports. It includes the current flow different users go through and how they overlap, including their starting scenario and what they aim to achieve, going through the steps they need to take to get to their end goal. In relation to each step, there are a number of challenges the users face, which have been identified through our research. These are mapped accordingly to the step in the process, highlighting the opportunities for improvement.

Ideate the possibilities

In this phase, we engaged with the partners and ideated around what could be built as an outcome of the use case. We discussed and refined these ideas, considering how UDX could best support this outcome. It was important to is the story we want to tell at the end

Ideation workshops

We conducted 3 ideation workshops for the 3 different use cases.
The workshops included:

Specific and high level outcomes/ goals of the use cases (shared, discussed and prioritised)
How we can achieve these outcomes? Why do these challenges need to be solved? What are the blockers?
Refined the idea - what does it need to be successful and how UDX can support this?

Define what’s needed

In this phase, we refined use cases, generated user stories, created a features roadmap, did some value proposition exploration and created robust business model proposals.

This supported the team for development of the product and startup.

Deliver the MVP

In this phase, I mapped out user flows, wire-framed low and high fidelity screens and worked closely with the engineers understand feasibility of the technology. I also conducted user testing and tested the concept and prototype with users. I also created a brand strategy and visual identity for the new startup. We conducted many technical sessions, mapping and brainstorming workshops, and completed 8 sprint demos.

Low fidelity wireframes

After working with the product team to clarify user stories and feature prioritisation, I began sketching low fidelity wireframes. These took into consideration user types, user flows and site structure.

High fidelity wireframes

I used Figma to design responsive UI screens and collaborated closely with the engineers to understand the technical constraints. I was embedded into the engineering team during the agile development process and ensured the designs were feasible and implemented appropriately.

I prototyped the designs and demoed them every 2 weeks to the product team, developers and wider consortium.

User testing

We conducted 5 user testing sessions:

Economist
Senior product and project manager
Senior Transport planner
Real estate consultant
Data analyst

The insights were captured and the wireframes were refined. It also allowed us to plan and design for beyond the MVP.

Brand strategy & visual identity

I ran a brand strategy workshop with the team which covered company purpose, values, personality and brand essence. Translating the brand values and personality into a visual identity. This will create a consistent way of communicating internally and externally so that everything we do feels like a part of the same family.

As a result of this workshop, visual identity
Logo, Imagery, Illustrations, Colours, Fonts

Learnings

The initial brief to ‘explore these use cases’, meant lots of time was spent managing the expectations and getting the team onboard with design activities. It would have been smoother to have defined the terminology from the beginning of the project. Words that were used daily, but often in different contexts, meaning it was really important for us to align on what we mean and clarify the context of these words.

This project gave me lots of experience working closely with a variety different roles, from design, product and technical teams, to management and the CEO.