Multi-meter Analysis for Industrial Water Monitoring
Redesigning a data comparison workflow that 65% of users were solving manually outside the product.
Role: Sole Product Designer, SAIGU Monitoreo / Suyana Tecnologias
Impact: Delivered a comparison feature requested by active user base, replacing a manual spreadsheet workaround that users had built outside the product to compensate for a gap in the platform.
Tools: Adobe XD
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.
Project Scope
& Challenge
The request was to build a page view where users could review data from multiple meters at the same time. What was not defined was how that view should work and whether the proposed format was actually the right solution for the problem.
Challenge: I was the sole designer across all digital and visual work, no design team, no research function. I worked directly with one full-stack developer and the business owner, who also acted as Product Owner and the only point of contact with users.
What Users Actually Needed
65% of active users were requesting the ability to compare meters across their facilities. Without this feature, they were reviewing each meter individually inside the platform, then manually building their own spreadsheets outside of it to consolidate and compare the data.
These were industrial operators and facility managers who needed to answer practical questions: which area of a building was consuming the most water, what normal usage looked like across locations, and how to report consumption data to people above them in their organization.
The product had the data. Users just had no way to see it together.
The Brief: A spreadsheet in the browser
The original requirement was literal: replicate what users were already doing in Excel, but inside the platform.
The problem was structural. A table that displays everything at once forces users to filter mentally, after the data is already in front of them.
The Solution: Decide First, Analyze Second
I proposed a three-step flow: an empty canvas of four slots, a search dialog to add meters one at a time, and a results view that only loads once selections are confirmed. Decide first, analyze second.
The four-meter limit was a shared decision with the developer, balancing backend complexity with visual clarity.
Permission Scope
The comparison feature had to work across a four-tier hierarchy without requiring a different design for each role. By design, the selection dialog only surfaced meters within each user’s access level. No locked states, no visible gaps. Users with a single meter did not see the feature at all.
Validating the Approach
Before high-fidelity, I pressure-tested the interaction with a couple of our field operator, who used the platform daily during installations and maintenance, and with other coworkers who had platform access but were not power users.
I was looking for one thing: would the results feel useful and clear to someone doing this job?
Outcomes
• 65% of the active user base had requested this capability. It shipped, and the
manual spreadsheet workaround it replaced was eliminated.
• The photo documentation standard, I had already stablished across the platform, became functional UI infrastructure, giving users a visual reference to identify the exact physical meter at each location.
• The feature launched successfully and was considered complete, allowing the team to move immediately to the next product priority.
What I learned
Designing in an environment where design had no formal seat at the table taught me to build my case through cross-functional validation and to advocate for user-centered decisions even when the process did not support it.
