- Role
- Lead Designer
- Scope
- Product design UI libraries Interactive illustrations Design-to-dev pipeline
- Team
- A team of 4, through CodeControl, with Siemens Mobility's internal product team
- Tools
- Sketch SVG
- Timeline
- Jul 2018 – Feb 2020
- Platform
- Admin tool
Case study · B2B admin tool · 2018–20
Siemens
An admin tool for Siemens Mobility's railway operations, taken from concept to MVP to a full product used across the mobility network.
Internal tool. The screens are blurred and only details are shown.
Problem
Siemens Mobility needed an admin tool for the railway sector, used by technicians, managers and mechanics in different locations.
What I did
As the only designer I took the tool from concept to MVP to a full product, prioritising the most critical operator workflows at each stage, with direct input from technicians and mechanics.
Result
A full-fledged admin tool used across the mobility network in Europe.
Context & problem
Siemens is a multinational technology group headquartered in Munich, Germany, founded in 1847. This project was for Siemens Mobility, in the railway sector, which serves customers in 60+ countries worldwide. I worked most closely with teams and partners in Germany and Spain.
The tool had to serve very different users: technicians, managers and mechanics, working in different locations of the mobility network. It had to fit into Siemens’ ecosystem, follow its brand guidelines and stay versatile enough for all those needs. Transport is a traditionally slow-moving industry, so the aim was to iterate quickly with a small team.
Scope & my role
I joined a Siemens Mobility project through CodeControl as the only designer, inside a small team of four (myself and a couple of engineers) that partnered closely with Siemens’ own internal product team. Being that small let us move fast and mostly independently, while still building within Siemens’ engineering systems and standards rather than around them.
I owned
- Design, from concept to full product
- UI component libraries
- Interactive SVG illustrations that mimic the real-life hardware interfaces
- Prioritising critical operator workflows
Worked with
- Siemens's internal product team
- A CodeControl team of 4
- End users: technicians and mechanics
Working with the users
Direct input from technicians and mechanics shaped the interface. They were the ones who knew what a status on screen actually meant on a piece of hardware in the field, so their feedback drove most of the design decisions.
The trickiest part was representing physical hardware in software terms operators would immediately recognise: the same devices, connectors, channels and pin layouts they saw standing in front of the equipment, not a simplified stand-in for it. Getting that one-to-one mapping meant working with technicians to check that what was on screen actually matched the real hardware.
The project moved through the same kind of iteration: a proof of concept, then an MVP, then a fully functional version, adjusting at each stage based on what the last round of feedback turned up.
The interface
At its core, the tool was a live overview of Siemens Mobility’s railway network: real-time device statuses, track voltages and sensor data across the system, all in one dashboard technicians and managers could use to monitor and manage hardware spread out along the line without being physically there. The tool is for internal use, hence the blurred out images below.
- Countries
- 60+
- Employees
- 34,000+
- Team size
- 4