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IoT · Industrial2024
IOTBIT
A calm operator dashboard for 150+ industrial IoT devices, dropping decision latency below 50 ms.
- Client
- OTOBIT PRIVATE LIMITED
- Timeline
- 16 weeks · 2024
- Role
- Senior UI/UX · Design system lead
- Toolbox
- FigmaTokens StudioStorybookStyle Dictionary
[ 01 — Problem ]
Alert fatigue. Operators were tabbing away from the tool to verify state in Slack because the UI couldn't be trusted at a glance.
IOTBIT's operators run an industrial fleet 24/7. The previous tool worked but it shouted — every signal was the same red, every panel the same weight. We rebuilt it around the question: what does a calm dashboard look like at 3 AM?
[ 02 — Research ]
How I learned what to build.
- Shadow sessions · 3 shifts
Sat with operators during night, swing, and day shifts. Logged every glance away from the screen.
- Card sort · 150 settings
Grouped the 150+ device toggles into a 3-tier nav with operators, not for them.
- Color-system audit
Replaced 14 red shades with 3 + an intent system (info / warn / critical).
[ 03 — Insights ]
- Insight 01
“Operators trust monochrome. Color signals action; lack of color signals 'all good' faster than green ever could.”
- Insight 02
“The dashboard's job at 3 AM is to show nothing. The hardest screens to design are the empty ones.”
- Insight 03
“Latency is a UX metric. Every 100 ms of perceived lag added one Slack-verification per shift.”
[ 04 — Process ]
Discover, define, design, ship.
- 01Discover
12 hours of shadowing; built a 'glance budget' for the primary screen.
- 02Define
Re-scoped the project from 'visual refresh' to 'glance-time reduction'.
- 03Design
Tokenized the entire system; dark-first with a calm grayscale + 3 intent colors.
- 04Ship
Shipped behind a feature flag; ran for 2 weeks parallel to legacy tool before cutover.
[ 05 — Solution ]
The interface that shipped.
[ 06 — Impact ]
Numbers from production.
- 150+
- Devices managed
- 50 ms
- Decision latency down from 240 ms
- −72%
- Slack verifies per operator per shift
- AA
- WCAG 2.1 across primary surfaces
[ 07 — Lessons ]
I used to think dashboards were a visualization problem. They aren't. They're a trust problem. The numbers can be perfect, but if the surface doesn't read at a glance, operators will keep checking elsewhere.
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