Overview
A redesign of GeoDocs
The redesign introduced a brand-new experience, improving file management, transmittals, visualisation, and team collaboration, all tailored to the unique requirements of engineers and construction professionals. Following its adoption by the main client, Tucana™ have signed on more major railway projects, solidifying its success in the industry.
Background
Tucana™ is a cloud-based document management tool that provides a common data environment (CDE) for engineering and construction projects, evolving from GeoDocs to overcome its limitations in usability, scalability, and collaboration.
Objective
Improve usability, enhance navigation and streamline workflows for large-scale infrastructure projects.
Responsibilities
I spearheaded the entire design process, such as:
• User research and analysis
• Information architecture design
• Interaction design and prototyping
• Usability testing and iteration
• Visual design and UI specification
Discovery Phase
Understanding GeoDocs & its Users
User Research Approach
Before speaking to GeoDocs users, we started off with:
▫️ Initial Heuristic Evaluation to identify (what could be) usability issues before interviews
▫️ Collected comments and screenshot on Miro and group them under features as below.
We then interviewed users to observe how they completed their daily tasks, find out where they got stuck and points of frustrations.
Breaking down the features of GeoDocs and mapping out user pain points 🗣
Problem Statement
GeoDocs served its purpose as a foundational document collaboration tool but exhibited several limitations in UX & UI:
❗ Fragmented Features
Users had to navigate multiple, disjointed tools for design, document management, and visualization.
❗ Limited Scalability
GeoDocs couldn’t handle the growing complexity and volume of modern infrastructure projects.
❗ Outdated Interface
The user interface lacked intuitiveness, making onboarding and daily tasks cumbersome.
❗ Poor Real-time Collaboration
The tool was not designed for real-time collaboration between field and office teams.
These issues have impacted users efficiency, affected project delivery timelines and led to communication breakdown between builders and engineers.
Understanding Users
To dig deeper, we needed to understand the broader context of project ecosystem and its users.
Internal Users: KiwiRail engineers, project managers, document controllers
External Users: Contractors, site engineers, third-party consultants
Information Architecture
A key part was mapping out the exisiting information architecture of GeoDocs.
We needed to deconstruct its existing site navigation to understand how users navigate the platform and manage their workflows.
This process involved breaking down the system into core components, such as features, navigation tab and the hierarchy of others.
By visualising the IA, we identified bottlenecks and redundancies, help us to streamline navigation for Tucana.
1. Understand User Workflows: The task and files approval workflows needed each individual flow backed with UX findings
2. We also found out that certain workflow had overlapping functionalities
Workflow
The other complex thing to understand about engineering project life cycle is how the file goes through review and approval.
Generally the team structure is made out of 4 tiers:
• Programme → Project → Delivery Team → Task Team
While files go through 3 content stages, which are:
• Work In Progress (WIP)
• Shared
• Published
These stages defined where the users could locate files and push the files for approvals through the project lifecycle.
The final mapping diagram that was used as a guide for everyone in the team to understand Tucana's workflow.
Design System
Developing a Scalable Colour System
We developed a design system that provide a single source of components, patterns and style. As part of the discovery phase, I I mapped out the existing design elements of GeoDocs and identified inconsistencies in colour usage across the platform.
To ensure consistency with company's brand identity, I created these rules for the system:
1. Establishing neutral colour palette
Neutrals (Black, Greys, White) → Used for backgrounds, text, and borders
Primary Colours (Brand Purples) → Applied to key actions and interface elements
Accent Colours (Blues, Greens, Yellows) → Used for statuses, highlights, and interactions
Feedback Colours (Errors, Warnings, Success) → Indicating form validation and system responses
2. Defining colour states for UI interactions
Enabled: Default state for actionable items
Hover & Focused: Slightly darker or lighter variations for visual feedback
Pressed: Indicating active interaction
Disabled: Reduced opacity to signal inactivity
3. Documenting for the Developers so they could easily reference and apply the correct styles
As Tucana was growing with the number of clients, I was aware it was important to create a structured and scalable design system while allowing for brand adaptability.
Mobile Design
We initially designed for mobile but discovered engineers preferred tablets or desktops due to their work requirements.
So instead, we prioritized tablet-friendly interfaces for engineers who needed on-site access.
Project Completion
Tucana roll out success
"The Tucana roll out has been a success, and users have adopted it well. As a product, it strikes a good balance between information management best practice and ease-of-use, and the product team could not have been more supportive throughout design, implementation and aftercare. The consensus is that that this is a significant improvement on the previous system."
- Project Lead, one of Tucana clients
Feature Highlight
Files
On a large-scale construction and engineering projects, managing files efficiently is important for users to bulk upload files with different revisions, supersede existing versions, and share with specific team members while maintaining project security and compliance.
▹ Users can initiate workflows to track approvals and rejections to create a fully auditable record.
▹ A table-based layout is used to display uploaded files with metadata, with the ability to filter, search and preview on the side.
▹ Users required an intuitive interface to preview files alongside their metadata without navigating away.
▹ Intuitive interface allows you to quickly search, filter, and download in bulk.
Metadata tagging is essential for categorising engineering documents, which are often metadata-heavy. Users can apply metadata in bulk or individually
Bulk File Upload with Metadata Tagging
Users needed the ability to upload multiple files at once while ensuring metadata was correctly assigned for quick retrieval.
Metadata-heavy documents required structured organization to avoid misclassification.
File Superseding & Version Control
Users needed to update existing files while maintaining historical records for audit purposes.
Approval & Workflow Automation
Users needed to initiate and track approval processes with different team members, ensuring a fully auditable record.Approvers had to be able to review files, leave comments, and approve/reject them easily.
‣ Designed a workflow modal where users can assign approvers, set approval requirements, and leave comments.
‣ Integrated an auto-suggest feature for selecting team members, speeding up the assignment process.
‣ Enabled approvers to leave feedback directly within the interface, improving communication.
‣ Approval statuses (e.g., Approved, Rejected) are displayed in the history panel for tracking.
Users can replace outdated files with newer versions while maintaining access to previous revisions.
A dedicated audit history panel allows users to track changes and view past file versions.Introduced clear status labels (e.g., Work in Progress, Shared, Published) to indicate document status.
Feature Highlights
Task
Task was designed to help users manage approvals efficiently while keeping track of key actions taken on a task.
‣ Approve, Reassign, Reject Tasks – Users needed clear actions to move tasks through the approval process.
‣ File Attachments – Allowing users to upload relevant documents directly to a task for better context.
‣ All Approvers Required – Introducing a logic where tasks require multiple approvals before progressing.
‣ Responsive Layout – Making the interface adaptable across desktop and mobile for accessibility.
‣ Task Activity History – Tracking who approved, reassigned, or rejected tasks along with comments for better accountability.
Feature Highlight
Visualisation
I designed an intuitive layer selection panel with an accordion-style structure to organize parent-child relationships, ensuring users can easily toggle layers without cluttering the map. When a user selects a checkbox, the corresponding map layers appear dynamically, ensuring an intuitive and organized selection process.
Collaborating with geospatial engineers and users to refine the design iteratively, I gained insights into performance optimisation and rendering constraints. This helped refine how layers load dynamically, ensuring smooth interaction and efficient data visualization without overwhelming the user.
Optimising Layout
Working within a small space added another layer of complexity. By incorporating a search bar with a dropdown, a collapsible side panel for lists, and settings at the bottom, the map interface optimizes both discoverability and usability without overwhelming the user.
Feature Highlight
Transmittals
Transmittal feature is similiar to your usual email, inbox system but with more constraints. It is designed to facilitate seamless document transmission between users across the same or different projects.
‣ Guided Input: Users must complete mandatory fields and select predefined options for transmittal type and reasons before entering a message
‣ Rich text editor: The message section allows users to format their content and maintain consistency in messaging
‣ Files management: Two separate sections (Content Files & Supporting Files) can be attached to the transmittal and they are displayed in a table format to accommodate their extensive metadata efficiently.
Project & Team Selection
Users can send transmittals and notify:
• Individuals within their project
• Multiple recipients as a distribution list
• Groups from another project
• External teams
To improve clarity, we introduced subheadings in the dropdown list, clearly indicating which group they belong to. This makes bulk transmissions easier to manage.
Response Restrictions for Task Team Members
• When replying or forwarding to a transmittal, if a user is already a member of the task team, they cannot select that delivery team again.
• All original recipients in the thread will be notified and cannot be removed.
• Each response creates a new transmittal within the thread, maintaining a clear record of communication
• Users can attach supporting files to their responses
• We designed the interface to be adaptable for both desktop and mobile accessibility
Impact
Expansion in Rail Sector
Impact
Since its first launch with our platinum client in New Zealand, Kiwirail, Tucana has been successfully adopted by more railway projects, streamlining document management and enhancing collaboration at scale.
User Growth
Active users grew from 60 to 500 per month
Large-Scale Deployment
Migrated 59 projects, 60,000 files, and 10,000 transmittal communications.
Expansion in Australia
Tucana™ is now used in a major rail infrastructure project in Victoria through a joint venture.
With its scalability, intuitive workflows, and robust document management capabilities, Tucana has proven to be a trusted solution for large-scale infrastructure projects, driving efficiency and collaboration across industries.
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