VEERUM

VEERUM visualizes and unifies engineering, geospatial, planning, scheduling, and operational data for industrial companies. I joined as their first and only designer, tasked with building their design practice from scratch — introducing user research and modern processes to embed user-centered thinking into the product for the first time.

Over my time there, I conducted 100+ user interviews and usability tests, built a scalable design system, and reduced design-to-code turnaround time by 30%. The linear objects project was one of the most impactful things I shipped.

Users needed to tag linear assets — think pipes, circuits, and electrical runs across large industrial facilities. The existing tool forced them to place individual volumetric cubes one by one along the full length of an asset. For a complex circuit, this meant placing dozens of cubes sequentially, each requiring manual positioning and naming.

This had two major consequences:

• Efficiency: The process was so slow that clients were outsourcing tagging to offshore contractors — people who had never visited the actual sites.
• Accuracy: Contractors working from photos and floor plans made frequent errors, and the asset library became cluttered with meaningless intermediate objects.

I ran deep-dive interviews with field engineers, asset managers, and on-site contractors to understand the full workflow — from site survey to final asset library. The key insight: users weren't struggling with the concept of tagging, they were struggling with the tool's rigid, cube-by-cube model.

I mapped three potential solutions:

• Click points along a line — extend bounding boxes without creating new objects. Familiar, but too finicky for long runs.
• Pen tool / multi-point mode — click along shapes, drop points at curves. Quick but would "float" above assets rather than wrap them precisely.
• AI asset detection — automatic detection via a single click. Fast and accurate in theory, but the R&D team had already found it infeasible.

During research, I discovered VEERUM already had a measurement tool with nearly all the required functionality — users could create linked point chains by clicking along assets. The platform had this capability sitting unused.

The solution: combine the existing chain measurement behavior with object customization (naming, coloring, saving to the asset library). This meant:

• No new infrastructure required
• Users were already familiar with the measurement tool's interaction model
• Minimal dev scope = fast time to value

I ran usability testing with 7 participants. All completed assigned tasks — but surfaced three friction points that shaped the final design: