Openspace Subscriptions

2023 • design lead • UX design

OVERVIEW

Openspace.ai is Google Street View for construction projects. In 2022 after reaching series D, it began work to change its pricing model. The existing model sold project to project (it was used to document each construction project as it started), but that made it hard to project ARR. After bringing in pricing model consultants and countless hours of debate between executives, sales, and product, we had a general skeleton of a new subscription model. However, there were many internal details and questions unanswered, and more worryingly, customers had started to anxiously inquire about the change as well. I lead the design of the new subscription portal and a new admin user type to help clarify those questions.

“How might we explain our new pricing model to customers?”

Collaborators

Michaela Rhile - product lead

Robert Mills - senior staff frontend engineer

Michale Fleischman - cofounder/CTO

VISION

SKIP TO: OVERVIEW • RESEARCH • DESIGNS

Envisioning how the pricing model translates to the product

So what does the new pricing model mean for our product? After reviewing and revising the product requirements document with product and our CTO, I determined the following vision for the subscription portal:

A user of a certain permission can go on the portal to:

1. Check annual subscription capacity and the date it ends or renews

2. Show existing projects that draw down on the annual capacity

3. Create new projects and calculate how much capacity it uses

4. Archive old ones into a read-only status

Highlighting gaps through design

Because the pricing model was not fleshed out, I found it interesting how many conversations it sparked through showing actual designs. Often these were convoluted discussions that were tabled or details that slipped through the cracks. But in order to explain our model to the customers, we had to be crystal clear about it ourselves and confront these gaps. For example:

How do legacy projects and customers convert to the new pricing model?
We already have an archive (and closed) project status that functions completely differently from the proposed mode. How do we migrate or change project statuses?
Is the person who creates the project also the same person in charge of monitoring subscription capacity?

RESEARCH

SKIP TO: OVERVIEW • VISION • DESIGNS

Recruiting for research

Sales was very reluctant to let me talk to existing customers, because I might spook them with talks of pricing changes. To win their confidence, we first tested on 6 internal “subject matter experts” who were construction industry veterans. When we became more confident, we recruited another 6 actual Openspace customers with the blessing of the sales team.

Here are some highlights of our research and design changes below:

The person who creates a project is not always the same person who manages the subscription

Previously, the project creation was a whole workflow where a project is created via uploading construction documents and filling out form fields:

Old project creation flow in web and mobile

But it turns out that at big companies, an office person would would manage subscriptions but it would be the people in the field that would have the information to complete the project creation flow by uploading floorplans and inviting the right people.

“...my idea would be to create [the project] and then share it with the project manager or superintendent who is on the job. And then he would upload the floor plans and invite the people...I wouldn’t know about”

— Austin Jones, Head of Innovation at De Angelis Diamond

I separated the project creation flow into two pieces; one that allows admins to create a shell while controlling subscription capacity, and where users with edit permissions and above can set up the rest of the documents.

Made-up terminology in the PRD that the construction industry does not understand

The PRD uses one very important terminology: “Project ACV”. It refers to the amount a construction project is valued at, averaged over the course of a year. For example, if Google is constructing a $4 billion dollar office that will take 4 years to build, it’s annualized construction value is $1 billion. This matters because if this project is to be documented on Openspace.ai, it would have a draw of $1 billion from a total annual capacity that Google purchases from us. But it turns out that the construction industry does not have a concept of “project ACV”.

We tried different terms but it was causing a lot of confusion. So I changed designs to show the math of how capacity is calculated instead.

Clean up project statuses

The PRD mentions a new project status that is “read-only”, where a user can still access data without the project drawing down on capacity. This is because when a construction project finishes, it still needs documentation for 10 years in case of law-suits. However, we already had 4 project statuses, none of which matched this new definition:

The fast (and lazy) way would be the slap a new status on top of the everything. But users expected this new “read-only” status to be called “archived”, or “completed”, which already existed. On top of that, existing statuses were confusing to differentiate, even internally, and often caused confusion for users. For example, “draft” mode:

In the end, I simplified projects into 2 statuses: active and draft. I worked with the backend team on how existing projects would migrate.

DESIGNS

SKIP TO: OVERVIEW • VISION • RESEARCH

This project also allowed me the freedom to clean up our navigation and main page (which changed according to what tab you were on), by removing all the admin related tabs to it’s own page. It taught me how to push design related changes are part of larger company wide business priorities.