Work carried out for
Role & Team
Product Design and Management
Discovery, product vision and strategy, UX/UI, business model, international strategy...
Mission: 6 months with a team of 3 developers, 1 data scientist, and 1 PO.
Challenge
Capture a new market
Imageau develops a product to help local authorities manage their water resources.
To expand, they aimed at industrial companies.
This is where I come in.
Results
Developed a new app in 6 months.
Secured annual subscriptions from 4 major industrial clients pre-launch.
DISCOVERY
Alert Levels
by department
46
Crisis
38
Major alert
9
Alert
2
Vigilance
2
No restrictions
Millions of euros lost per year
The State can suspend water withdrawals or reduce them by 20-45%, depending on drought alert levels.
Insurer cost: €2.9 billion.
2,000 municipalities nearing water supply cutoff.
Most affected industries
Agri-food
Chemical
Pharmaceutical
Paper
Targets
HSE (Hygiene Safety Environment) or CSR managers
Factory directors
“We have shifted from an era of water abundance to one of careful management.”
3 main problems, that no company directly address.
No visibility
on future restrictions.
No way to secure the production in the short/medium term.
No effective tool
to monitor and ensure compliance with restrictions.
Need to consult official websites regularly and create manual reports.
No effective tool
to monitor my water resources and infrastructure.
No tracking of water volume or extraction equipment condition.
2 indirect competitors
Waterplan
Focuses on managing long-term drought risks
Aquassay
Focuses on water use efficiency and industrial process optimization
View
Alert levels across all customer sites
using official API data and clear visualisation.
Anticipate
Future alert levels (3-6 months)
using a machine learning model.
Pilot
State of the resource and infrastructure
through a dashboard displaying key site water information.
DESIGN
Story mapping revealed the need for 2 levels of information granularity
Overview of all production sites
Detailed view of specific sites
Tested 7 hypotheses in subsequent user interviews
Intermediate fidelity mockups (inspired by client's design system) to explore and test solutions with industry professionals.
1 - Map vision: current and future state of drought alert levels
Current
Future
Goals
See at a glance:
Changes in site drought alert levels (past or future)
Drought alert levels on all sites (map on the right)
Choices
Switch easily between current and future periods.
Show alert levels only in relevant departments.
Display probability rates and considered data for predictions.
Email and in-app notifications for drought alert level changes.
User feedback
Analyzing the state of water resources, the root cause of water restrictions, would be very useful.
Clarify the link between the map and the left panel.
Add site water use KPIs to the alert level change card.
⚠️ Problem
Our data scientist pulled out his hair analyzed the data used in some drought orders for 2 weeks.
Conclusion: alert level decisions have a strong human bias and may rely on different data depending on the department.
After some discussions with the team and users...
💡Solution
using machine learning models already operational in Imageau's product for local authorities.
Final mockups
1 - Map view: current state of drought alert levels
2 - Map view: current and future state of water resources
Goals
View the current or future state of water resources (groundwater, Surface water, rain) across all sites and level changes.
Identify discrepancies between resource levels and current drought alerts to anticipate future restrictions.
Choices
Simplified reading with up and down arrows (cards and map).
Improved readability of level change timelines (cards).
Clearer link between the side panel and the map.
User feedback
No further improvements needed currently.
3 - Site view: resources and risks of water stress
Goals
View the site's current and future drought risk exposure.
Long-term water stress: help industrial companies project drought impact over time with this initial low-cost feature (using Imageau and open data).
Choices
Focus on crucial information forming the site's water identity sheet.
User feedback
Added: water withdrawals. Goal: view the source of water and its environmental impact.
4 - Site view: water metrics
Goals
Monitor site water withdrawals and ensure regulatory compliance.
Track current resource status and water performance KPIs.
Choices
Instant metric view. Users can click any metric to enlarge its history.
User feedback
Add an interpretation layer to convert raw data into actionable insights using Imageau's expertise.
BUILD
There’s a first time for everything.
And it's usually fun.
I worked in Kanban for the first time with a team of developers who had little to no experience creating products from scratch.
Useful workshops, detailed story mapping, and weekly refinements helped us develop this new app in 4 months, without deviating from the initial roadmap.
BUSINESS MODEL
Audit
Understand and secure water access
✔️ Hydrogeological study
✔️ Drought risk impact assessment
✔️ Resource mix definition
10k€
/site, single payment.
Vigilance
Monitor water risks and resources
✔️ Current/past drought alert levels on all sites
✔️ Current/past groundwater, surface water, and rain levels
✔️ Notifications of drought alert and resource level changes
5k€
/site and /year
Management
Monitor water risks and resources
✔️ Current/past drought alert levels on all sites
✔️ Current/past groundwater, surface water, and rain levels
✔️ Notifications of drought alert and resource level changes
✔️ Monitoring of your water wells, withdrawals and consumption.
7k€
/site and /year
Prediction
Complete solution to monitor, manage and anticipate water risks.
✔️ Current/past drought alert levels on all sites
✔️ Current/past groundwater, surface water, and rain levels
✔️ Notifications of drought alert and resource level changes
✔️ Monitoring of your water wells, withdrawals and consumption.
✔️ 3-month prediction of groundwater levels
✔️ 1-month prediction of surface water
10k€
/site and /year
RESULTS
4 large industrial companies purchased an annual subscription.
even before the application is launched 🥳... However, this new app relies partly on French data (drought orders and water levels).
How to scale the product internationally?
Many countries face drought, have alert systems, and offer similar open data. But Imageau is a small company and cannot cover the whole world at once.
After some research on this subject, I developed a decision flow and a scoring sheet which help evaluate the opportunity to enter a any country.
Conversion
Corporate promotes the product, but site operations teams often bear the cost.
We had to engage with corporate before accessing the factory HSE personnel and directors who also use our product.
With initial customers, continued user research is essential to make sure the product convinces this persona.
Research
It was difficult to conduct quantitative research.
Without a product and an established customer base, it was impossible to conduct quantitative research on a representative sample.
As Imageau's customer base grows, adding quantitative methods will be essential to measure impact, test hypotheses, and prioritize efforts.