Smart City Suite is a modular IoT platform used by cities across the globe to manage operations, public safety and citizen services. It combines data from sensors, cameras, and enterprise systems to support real-time intelligence and decision making.
I joined the team to lead product design for the suite. The role went beyond improving interfaces—it required shaping product direction, bringing customer reality into decision-making and building a UX practice that could scale with a complex product.
$40m+
revenue generated by this product annually
70+
live deployments across the globe
100m+
citizen lives already touched by this product
When I stepped in, the platform had strong capabilities but a few underlying issues:
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Product direction was fragmented, often shaped by individual deals rather coherent strategy
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Customer feedback existed, but lived in silos and rarely influenced the roadmap in a structured way
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While the Suite was broad, certain critical city services were not well supported readily
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The suite was positioned for a specific market segment, but customer demand revealed a gap for smaller communities with similar need and reduced complexity
Additionally, An under-defined UX practice- UX was involved, but processes, expectations, and influence varied across teams and projects.
These were interconnected problems—solving them required working across strategy, delivery, and organization.
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Grounding the product in customer reality
To reduce guesswork in decision-making, I initiated a structured Voice of Customer practice.
This brought together:
Feedback from sales and pre-sales conversations
Learning from deployment and project teams
UX reviews of live customer systems
A key focus was encouraging teams to share friction and failure, not just successes. Over time, this practice:
Created a shared understanding of real customer needs
Informed roadmap prioritization
Helped leadership evaluate trade-offs more confidently
Customer insights became an input to strategy.
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Shaping Product Direction at the Platform Level
With stronger customer grounding, I worked closely with product leadership to clarify the direction of the Smart City Suite.
This involved:
Synthesizing customer insights, usability studies, secondary research, and UX evaluations
Participating in demos and early customer discussions to validate assumptions
Helping define what the suite should prioritize
The outcome was a clearer product roadmap, aligned around platform evolution
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Adding a new module to strengthen the suite
I also helped drive the addition of a new module focused on critical city services.
This module:
Addressed gaps in the existing product proposition
Strengthened the suite’s relevance for city operations
Integrated cleanly with the broader platform rather than functioning as a standalone add-on
This work helped expand the suite’s capabilities while reinforcing its value as unified platform
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Innovation and future capabilities
I lead an exploratory initiative to assess how emerging capabilities, such as digital twin and drone integration, could extend the suite’s value for city operations.
Focus was on:
Understanding feasibility
Operational relevance
Explore how the capability could integrate with the existing offering
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Structuring & scaling the UX practice
Alongside product work, I focused on improving how UX operated within the scope of this product and related teams.
This included:
Establishing clearer ways of briefing and scoping UX work
Improving expectation-setting with stakeholders
Introducing cross-functional feedback-sharing rituals
Managing and mentoring designers to focus on outcome and impact
Establishing design principles and approach for the product
Securing 3 new deals for the improved platform
Designing a building of a critical services module collaborating with a customer
2 new customers for a new product which is built for an adjacent market segment
Clearer product direction at a platform level
Roadmap decisions grounded in real customer needs
A more structured and effective UX practice
Improved collaboration across UX, product, sales and engineering