Turning Data into Impact: Designing Sustainability Features for Manufacturing Workflows

Company:
aPriori Technologies

Team:
PM , Tech Lead

Role:
Lead Product Designer

Timeline:
10 month

Introduction:

Our SaaS platform helped manufacturers and engineers simulate processes, but lacked carbon footprint and sustainability metrics, leaving customers without a full view of their design impact.

The business aimed to differentiate the product and drive retention by adding carbon footprint insights to the cloud application, while users needed meaningful data to help them make informed, environmentally responsible decisions within their manufacturing processes.

PROBLEM

As the lead designer, I guided an early product discovery and design process that resulted in a validated summary of customer needs, a proposed set of sustainability features for the roadmap, and the launch of an MVP carbon footprint summary integrated with the current SaaS product. The new features provided procurement teams with actionable insights to make more informed, sustainable decisions and expanded product value and differentiation.

SOLUTION

IMPACT

  • Shipped MVP

  • Defined a roadmap of sustainability features

RESEARCH

I led the early product discovery phase. My contributions included: User research, Market scan, and Workshop facilitation.

User research:

  • Conducted 20+ interviews with manufacturing engineers, procurement teams, and sustainability officers

  • Ran contextual inquiries with 3 enterprise customers to observe workflows

  • Synthesized insights into key pain points

Market:

  • Benchmarked competitors and industry standards

  • Identified white space

DESIGN EXPLORATION

Concept #1

Carbon Footprint Overlay

Concept #2

Material Comparison Tool

Concept #3

Sustainability Dashboard

OUTCOME & IMPACT

  • 80% of interviewed customers confirmed a strong interest in sustainability insights

  • First enterprise customer adopted the carbon overlay feature, citing it as a key differentiator in their vendor selection

  • Positioned the company as an early leader in sustainable manufacturing simulation software

  • Task success rate

  • Time on task

  • NPS

  • CSAT