We lead ESI through a full digital transformation, designing multiple enterprise applications that revolutionized the way employees perform critical aspects of their jobs on a daily basis.

Overview

Engineering Systems Inc. (ESI) is an engineering and scientific investigation and analysis firm that has been in business since 1987. Over a five year timeframe, MaybeForYou partnered with the organization to leverage human-centered design to radically transform their internal tool, processes, and operations.

Today, every member of the ESI team uses some piece of software that was designed and developed by MaybeForYou. Providing employees with more access to information, the ability to complete tasks more efficiently, and saving the company time and money.

Client
ESI
Area of Focus
Business & Enterprise Software

TL;DR.

  • Built an enterprise time tracking system that resulted in a six-figure return on investment.
  • Leveraged behavioral science and human physiology to streamline internal communications and knowledge management to create a more united company culture.
  • Built an enterprise artifact and warehouse management system to automate the chain-of-custody tracking of items in ESI’s care.

Services Provided.

  • User Research
  • Ethnographic Research & Shadowing
  • Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops
  • Product Strategy
  • User Experience Design
  • User Interface Design
  • Prototypes & Testing
  • Responsive Web Design
  • Native Application Development
  • Technical Development & Systems Integration

Learn More About Our Services

Process.

Discover

Discover

Define

Define

Design

Design

Develop

Develop

Deliver

Deliver

More Effective Means of Tracking Time 

Our relationship with ESI started by helping them reimagine a tool for improving how engineers and consultants log time more accurately. While a legacy system was in place, it wasn’t intuitive and lacked many crucial features — mainly the ability to track time across devices.

Shadowing employees, we were able to define features and functionality that fit more naturally into their daily workflow. Identifying third-party applications employees use on a regular basis, we were able to offer integration that automates time tracking and provided suggestions to users. We also built in support for offline time tracking, so employees could log data locally that is synced to the cloud when an internet connection becomes available. These features not only helped improve the employee’s experience with the application, they also helped us provide a six-figure ROI by capturing time that would have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

This built increased trust with ESI, and they asked for our help in transforming other internal applications. The next was tackling employee communication, knowledge and document management, and providing a central hub for information at ESI. Leveraging the knowledge we gained from helping Jamestown Properties solve a similar challenge, we got to work to identify how to best help ESI with these tasks. While completely separate and custom systems, we found that a lot of the behavioral and human physiology needs were the same. This allowed us to design a system that not only addressed the business requirements of the project but also helped unite a broad workforce and strengthen ESI’s company culture.

ESI Artifact Management System iPad Application

Modernizing, connecting, and scaling artifact management

The most recent tool we helped ESI transform was a little more complex. With hundreds of employees, offices spread throughout the US, and dozens of active projects, ESI needed a way of keeping track on every artifact that is in their custody.

Artifacts needed to be tracked from the moment they were placed into ESI’s care, including every employee that accessed it, exactly where it was being stored, and any and all changes that were made to the artifact (as engineering and scientific tests were performed). The system also needed to allow for warehouse and location management, accounting for current warehouses, future storage locations, and pop-up locations that get built at job sites. Obviously the platform needed to be extremely secure, infinitely scalable, and very easy for employees to use without much training or previous chain-of-custody knowledge.

To accomplish this we built a custom web-based and mobile application that interfaces with barcode scanners, NFC chips, receipt printers, and GPS data to automate many steps in the process. The final platform was easily rolled out across the entire organization and because of the extensive user research conducted at the beginning of the project, integrated effortlessly into the way employees are use to working. To date, more than 100,000 artifacts have been managed using this system.

Across all of this, we didn’t just design the way something looked or even how it worked. We designed the thousands of interactions that happen across the company every single day. Making each one less time-consuming, less expensive, and more delightful to use over the course of an employee’s busy workday.