About Company

SAIGU Monitoreo is a private B2B SaaS platform serving medium and large industrial clients across Mexico and Colombia, enabling real-time monitoring of water, air, and grease consumption.

Challenge

SAIGU's desktop platform was built for managers at a desk, dense with data and multi-level navigation. The people maintaining meters worked in the field, with limited laptop access and without time to spare. The challenge was to define what this industrial platform should be on mobile and ship it as the company's first native Android app.

The Business Case for Mobile

The push for a mobile app came from the top. The business owner wanted to expand the platform's reach and attract new clients by giving users access beyond the office.

The direction was clear: build something that felt like a natural extension of the platform. With 75% of existing users on Android devices across Mexico and Colombia, a native Android release was the obvious first move.

What the app should actually be was mine to define.

Scoping for the Field

The desktop platform was built to show everything. On mobile, that would have been unusable.

I reviewed every desktop feature against one question: would a technician in the field actually need this right now? I defined the information architecture and aligned the business owner and developer on the scope before any build work started.

What made it into the MVP:

• Real-time meter data surfaced at the top.
• Quick access to location, photos, and consumption history.
• A flat, fast structure that could expand in future versions.

Designing Without a Direct Line to Users

Direct access to clients was not part of my role. The business owner managed all client relationships, so I worked with what I had.I mapped the entire app flow on paper first to test navigation logic with coworkers. The goal was simple: could someone find what they needed without my help? They could.

From there I moved to digital wireframes to pressure-test the structure further before any engineering investment was made.

The Feature I Pushed For

Notifications were not in the original scope. I flagged them early as a critical need: a meter going offline in an industrial environment is not something a user should discover when they check their computer.

The business owner was not convinced, so I started exploring the design alongside my existing workload.

A small test group of 10 people, including coworkers and clients, validated the need. 80% asked for real-time alerts. That made it a requirement.

I refined the initial designs for mobile clarity, adapting the color-coded severity system already established in the desktop platform.

Building the Visual Foundation

The app extended SAIGU's existing visual language to mobile. The icon set, originally designed for the desktop platform, was built to scale and adapted for the app across every core function, from meter readings to alerts and location. And the color system followed the established brand palette, adjusted for mobile screen density and field environments. Roboto kept the experience feeling native to Android.

Mizu, the app mascot, was also designed by me. Used deliberately and sparingly, appearing in onboarding, empty states, and error screens only. In an industrial B2B product, personality needs a reason to be there. Lastly, to make sure the design held through build, I worked directly in Android Studio, owning the visual implementation and reviewing UI details on emulator and physical device before anything shipped.

Launch & Legacy

The Android app launched in Mexico, Colombia, and the US. I owned the full go-to-market execution: Google Play assets, store copy, and a social media campaign that ran from pre-launch teaser posts through release.

The app was received well enough to greenlight iOS development. The notification pattern I designed for mobile was later adopted by the desktop platform.