Plappen
Overview
Designed the MVP of a new iPad planner app for a forest management company, modernizing their legacy system. The solution reduced the time to create 10-year forest management plans from 4 weeks to 2-4 days, ensuring long-term timber access from 50,000 private landowners.
Challange
The company relied on an outdated Windows XP desktop application to create complex, visually and data-heavy forest management plans, making modernization crucial.
The legacy codebase was too old to update, severely limiting the ability to improve or maintain the software.
The system was disconnected from key data sources, preventing planners from leveraging real-time insights to make more accurate and efficient recommendations.
Planners had to carry bulky, outdated field laptops into the forest, which were prone to crashes, leading to significant data loss and rework.
The user experience (UX) was inefficient and outdated, slowing down workflows and making the planning process unnecessarily cumbersome.
Solution
Designed and developed a lightweight yet powerful iPad application, allowing planners to work efficiently on a modern, fast, and portable device in the field.
Conducted extensive user research with planners to deeply understand their workflow, ensuring the app was optimized for speed and usability.
Created a map-focused interface with a vector-based system, enabling planners to easily section land and generate precise recommendations.
Streamlined data entry, removing friction by designing an intuitive input system that allowed planners to quickly and accurately capture information on-site.
Integrated remote sensing data to pre-fill necessary fields, significantly reducing manual data entry while still ensuring planners had full control over the final plan.
Approach
Conducted ethnographic research with my Product Manager, spending three weeks shadowing planners in the field to document their workflow, identify pain points, and understand inefficiencies in both their process and the legacy application.
Used a combination of observations and in-depth interviews with multiple planners to gain a comprehensive understanding of their challenges.
Compiled key findings and collaborated with the client to develop a process optimization strategy and a clear roadmap for the new application.
Defined a five-month MVP roadmap with two-week sprints, ensuring an iterative and user-centered development approach.
Led the full-stack design efforts, spending the first week of each sprint on design discovery, collaborating closely with product, engineering, and client teams to define features.
Dedicated the second week to refining concepts and running usability tests with planners, ensuring the app met their needs and provided a seamless experience.
Kept end-users at the core of the design process, continuously validating solutions to ensure the final product was intuitive, efficient, and purpose-built for their workflow.
Finalized and prepared designs for smooth handoff to the engineering team, ensuring clear documentation and alignment on implementation.
Decisions
Prioritized a large, always-accessible map view, addressing a major usability issue in the previous software where the map was too small despite being central to the planning process.
Challenged the old software’s approach, ensuring the UI was designed around creating sections and recommendations directly on the map, rather than minimizing its importance.
Initially combined the map editing mode and data entry mode in the same interaction model, aligning with what planners were accustomed to in the old system.
Identified a key issue through testing, realizing that the mixed workflow created distractions and reduced focus for planners.
Refined the interaction model, hiding the sidebar during map editing to allow for a more focused mapping experience while ensuring planners could still view, but not edit, the map when entering data.
Validated the new approach through user testing, receiving highly positive feedback from planners, confirming improved workflow efficiency and usability.
Results
Designed and delivered the MVP of a modern iPad-based planner app within six months, replacing the outdated legacy system.
Successfully launched the first internal version in January 2025, marking a major milestone in the company’s digital transformation.
Dramatically reduced the time required to create 10-year forest management plans from 4 weeks to just 2-4 days, significantly increasing efficiency.
Enabled 50,000 private landowners to receive faster and more accurate management plans, securing long-term timber access for the company.
Helped strengthen the business backbone by improving operational efficiency, streamlining workflows, and empowering planners with modern tools.
