Briefing & challenge

BIMSystems founders asked us to identify opportunities where general contractors could benefit from BIM data management, aiming to position them as central partners in product development. The challenge was to deliver immediate value for general contractors while addressing real user needs related to BIM data among their project participants.

The Solution

We identified the opportunity to support consistent attribute management across construction projects. Our solution was a vocabulary tool enabling information managers to track project progress with reliable data, while planners collaborate using a mapped vocabulary. This product idea addressed user needs and positioned BIMsystems strategically with general contractors as partners.

Project details

Client

BIMSystems

Duration

12 months

UX role

Overall UX

Design process

Analysis

  • Opportunity workshop with key stakeholders
  • Field research in construction processes & standards
  • 18 Interviews with planners & managers

Ideation

  • Key personas & their needs
  • Process mapping & pain points
  • Key solution scenario
  • Priotization workshops with key stakeholders
  • Product story mapping

Design

  • Detailed workflows
  • Navigation structures
  • Wireframes
  • Mockups

Validation

  • Focus groups with key stakeholders


1. Starting the journey

After conducting an opportunity workshop with a key partner, where we defined a showcase for project management collaboration in Waya (another application within the BIMsystems ecosystem), we decided to reframe our workshop findings and explore new product opportunities that could deliver unique value with low development risk. The workshop challenge — “How can we help general contractors make construction processes in complex projects with many stakeholders more predictable and efficient?” — remained the guiding question as we continued our exploration in Mairen.

During the workshop, some stakeholders mentioned an attribute manager as a potential opportunity, but its purpose was not yet clear to us. We therefore decided to conduct additional interviews to understand why this idea could be interesting and what specific needs it could address.

Opportunity workshop first ideas.
Opportunity workshop first ideas.


2.Listening to users

Conversations with information managers and planners shifted our perspective. The real challenge wasn’t about using the same components, but about managing the attributes of those components — requirements such as cost, materials, or acoustic values that were difficult to keep consistent across libraries.

Information requirements were typically defined by general contractors, but planners often didn’t fill them in correctly because they used their own internal vocabularies to describe similar properties. This led to frequent misunderstandings, made it hard to track progress and costs, and created friction during project handovers or change requests.

Key personas & user needs based on our interviews to general contractor project participants.
Attribute exchange process during a typical general contractor project.


3.Reframing the challenge

We shifted focus from a generic data management platform to an attribute manager. Together with stakeholders, we defined an improved process for managing attributes and selected the first features for an MVP.

Scenario for collaborative property management.
Minimal viable product priorities defined with product team and key stakeholders.

4. Designing the solution

During the design phase, I created several wireframe iterations and gathered feedback through focus groups to refine them. From these sessions, we learned that attributes shouldn’t always be created within a single component but could also be reused globally across projects. This insight helped us improve the app’s overall structure, defining clearer workflows and navigation.

Prepare
Map
Minimal use (download)
General application structure where attributes can be created within a category component or globally.

4. An app for several use cases

The validated workflows and navigation structure became the foundation of our solution — a vocabulary-driven attribute manager that could be used by planners, information managers, and eventually manufacturers as well. The app enabled consistent and homogeneous data across different stages of the building process.

Impact & outcomes

Buildings Duotone Icon

4 new investors

Our showcase convinced 4 general contractors to invest

Cube Focus Duotone Icon

Enabling technology

Base for further BIM management tools

Certificate Duotone Icon

4,5 / 5 rating

Feature relevance rated in Survey

Learnings

What I specially learned from this project was to allow users for flexibility in the steps for achieving a goal. According to the feedback we received from Stakeholders, component descriptions can be created both by first defining attributes or first components, the tasks are related, but not dependant.

Concerning the development of mairen, we had limited resources. Therefore we had to learn as a team to define pretty well development scopes. Sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we had to cut off or adapt features. At the end it was important for us to balance between creating a scalable product and showing investors product business goals were achieved.

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