Overview

ioAirFlow App, Website & UX Strategy

Role
Lead Visual Designer, UX Specialist, QA Analyst

Timeline
Oct 2020 – Mar 2022

Impact
  • Launched a building health analysis platform later acquired by Premise SaaS HQ.
  • Enabled real-time sensor reporting with actionable insights and self-serve floor plan mapping.
  • Improved COVID safety monitoring for indoor spaces.
  • Created a faster, lower-cost alternative to traditional building audits.
  • Refreshed brand and digital presence, helping drive 14,000% web traffic growth.
  • Supported partnerships and funding that expanded the team.

​Methods
Competitor Analysis, Design Thinking, Design Sprints, Double Diamond, Agile, Usability Testing

The Challenge

ioAirFlow set out to make building health audits faster and more affordable by replacing slow, manual reporting with a digital platform that helps owners quickly identify issues through sensor-driven analysis.

​When I joined, the challenge was to help transform an eight-person manual process into an automated product while also refreshing the website to better communicate its value.
Clients struggled to interpret traditional building audit reports. Our challenge was turning complex sensor data into clear, actionable insights.
People spend nearly 90% of their time indoors, yet aging buildings often create hidden health risks. ioAirFlow helps make those issues visible before they become costly problems.

Improvements I Helped Our Team Achieve

Before I joined, ioAirFlow spent 1-2 months creating accurate reports. They haven't started automating anything outside of the analysis and the data analysis had bugs. The initial interface was not intuitive. I knew I had to work on a lot of things and these are my biggest wins!
Time Reduction
Now it takes just 1 hour to generate a report after data is collected. In comparison, before automating everything, it took the team two months, with more than six people working on the project.
Intuitive
Most users managed to create reports and navigate the product with very little guidance. All of them say the product was well designed and easy to use.
Responsive
My research has uncovered that most engineers who go for onsite visits use their tablets or phones for work. I saw the need to ensure that our product should be responsive.
Risk Reduction
Using a one to two-page summarized report, we can provide building occupants peace of mind to show them how their building is performing.
Brand Cohesion
Users like seeing a well-designed product. It gives the illusion that it's more usable. I created a UI library that the developers could reuse. In most usability tests, users remark that our software has always complimented the design and aesthetics.
Clarity of Terminology
Users could identify with the terms we used. It meant little to no confusion on the language we used on the latest usability tests. This is a heuristic I pay close attention to.
Sensor Mapping
In the past versions, our data analysts would have to manually provide coordinates on a canvas to display a sensor on a floor plan. I helped design a way to allow the users to place the sensors on their provided floor plans which saved two days of work effort.
Error Reduction
I helped reduce the errors found in the product. I'm not a QA engineer, but I do have background in QA Testing. I had to ensure our product was always accurate because it deals with the health and safety of building occupants. I took this on and established a process that our team can now implement without me.
Better Data Visualization
I provided ideal states that helped users verify how their building is performing. It enabled users to see what they should be aiming to improve.

My Roles

Although hired as a Visual Designer, I worked across UX, UI, data visualization, QA, and web design in a remote startup team.

I led the transformation of manual reporting into an automated digital experience, ran usability testing, improved data clarity, established QA processes, shaped product branding, and redesigned the website to create a more cohesive and user-friendly platform.

Getting Started

The idea behind our solution was pretty simple:
  1. Place the sensors
  2. Collect data
  3. Run the analysis
  4. View the results
​
Designing ioAirFlow required aligning hardware limitations, research complexity, and industry standards like ASHRAE, WELL, and LEED into a practical MVP. I collaborated across teams to map workflows, evaluate technical feasibility, and prioritize the highest-value features for the first release.​

Research

Usability Tests
Several usability tests were conducted to help incrementally guide user experience improvements for every version that is released.
Affinity Mapping
We had multiple iterations, but before we decide on the path we had to take, I usually wanted to pull the team together to understand the results of our combined research. This helped give the team shared understanding on what was wrong.
User Stories
I facilitated user story mapping sessions to help the team prioritize future features as we transitioned toward a more Agile product development process.
Brainstorming sessions helped us prioritize immediate versus future opportunities while adapting product strategy to shifting market needs during the pandemic.
I designed research surveys to reduce bias and support accurate insights, while introducing design sprints to tackle larger product challenges.

MVP Development

I mapped user flows and translated feature complexity into prototypes, wireframes, or collaborative discussions with developers to guide efficient product decisions.
After acquisition, I helped transition ioAirFlow into Premise SaaS by adapting the product to a new design system and modular platform architecture, though the final integrated product is under NDA and cannot be shown.

Data Visualization

I improved data visualization clarity by redesigning graphs to be more intuitive, on-brand, and benchmark-driven, introducing target values that gave users clear performance comparisons against ideal building health standards.

The Challenge of Automation

I helped transform ioAirFlow’s reporting from a manual process into an automated system that converts fluctuating sensor data into dynamic visual reports, enabling users to identify building issues through objective, real-time insights rather than subjective feedback.

Software Case Study

Here's one of our recent case studies.
Whiteshell School District Uses ioAirFlow Platform to Identify Covid-19 Risk and Ventilation Performance in Schools
Mounting studies are documenting that viruses can spread faster in stale, compromised air while poor indoor air quality (IAQ) continues to compromise children’s health and school performance.

Now, with the rise of COVID-19 there is a growing call for education facilities to take critical action by testing ventilation and other indoor environmental quality variables to ensure the safety of students and staff. Whiteshell School District heeded this call and used ioAirFlow's platform to identify COVID-19 transmission risk and optimal ventilation performance in their schools.

Before (Website Rebrand)

I was in charge of improving the websites to match the brand guidelines that I also developed.
Redesigning the brand

After (Website Rebrand)

The marketing team conducted a competitor analysis and I also checked the competitors in the space and ensured we took the best parts and followed UX design guidelines when building the revamped website.
Visual Style
We wanted to use existing graphics but ensure it looked more cohesive.
Updated Navigation and Site Map
With the help of the marketing team, we planned out the sitemap and how users should be navigating throughout the software.
Iconography
I wanted to only use two types of icon styles because it makes the brand look better instead of having different icon styles as before.
Photo Treatment
I wanted to ensure we had the same photo treatment across the page so I cropped backgrounds and adjusted the color settings of each photo.
I redesigned the website with improved navigation, content structure, and calls to action, contributing to stronger engagement and a 14,000% increase in total traffic alongside broader marketing efforts.

Key Challenges Solved

  • Made building health improvements more proactive and affordable, helping owners address safety issues before regulatory pressure forced action.
  • Simplified sensor setup by introducing floor plan reconstruction services and self-serve sensor mapping tools.
  • Helped design a scoring system based on industry standards like LEED to identify improvement opportunities and support smarter building decisions.
  • Positioned ioAirFlow as a cost-effective alternative in a crowded market by making advanced building insights faster and more accessible.
  • Reduced complexity in technical communication by translating engineering-heavy data into plain, actionable language for non-expert users.
​
Following acquisition, ioAirFlow evolved into an integrated ESG and IEQ intelligence solution within Premise SaaS’s Groundfloor platform, where its indoor environmental data now powers occupancy, usage, and sustainability reporting across commercial real estate portfolios.

Thanks ioAirFlow for this invaluable ride

ioAirFlow gave me the opportunity to help shape technology that makes healthier indoor spaces more visible, measurable, and actionable.​ Thank you.
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