Off Grid Bazaar - Design Case Study

Objective

Design a remote project management solution for a government agency

A government agency needed to monitor solar-powered water pumping systems provided to rural farmers across Nepal. Traditional on-site inspections were becoming costly and inefficient as operations scaled. We needed to create a digital solution that enabled remote monitoring, project management, and quality analysis while staying within technical feasibility.

Objective

Design a remote project management solution for a government agency

My Role

Lead Product Designer
User Research
Requirement Gathering
Stakeholder Manaement
Validation & QA Oversight

Process

User Interviews
Iterative Design
Cross-team collaboration
Testing

Deliverables

Documentation (UMLs, Flows)
Design System and Component Library
High-fidelity Prototypes

Challenges

Scope creep and more

The project requirements kept expanding after every meeting while operating on a tight deadline. Multiple parties were involved—the government agency, development team, R&D team, and upper management—each with different expectations. We also had to balance ambitious feature requests with technical feasibility and realistic timelines.

Approach

Communication and Documentation

We tackled the challenges through empathy-driven conversations, comprehensive documentation, and consistent stakeholder alignment. User interviews helped us understand real needs versus wants. Detailed documentation in the form of UMLs, meeting minutes, and organized spreadsheets kept everyone accountable. Routine check-ins and constant communication ensured no one was left out of the loop, enabling quick decision-making.

Approach

Communication and Documentation

Design Outcomes

Digitized real-world operations

After multiple conversations and iterations, we were able to create a system that satisfied the users and the people involved in creating it. The system successfully digitized real-world operations while providing an intuitive interface for managing complex IoT data and project workflows.

Please scroll more to see all that we were able to accomplish.

1/3

Documenting user insights

Some documentations amde during the early stages of design

2/3

Intuitive and Streamlined remote monitoring interface

A remote monitoring dashboard and digitized existing pipeline for monitoring real-time system data

3/3

Detailed Design System and Scalable Flows

While digitizling the pipeline, the process was broken down into modular interconnected sections that could be independently updated in the future

Reflections

The project involved a wide range of stakeholders that had their own ideas of what the best solution was. Working on this project taught me valuable lessons about stakeholder management and design process efficiency. Some of the other reflections were as follows

The importance of bringing stakeholders together early
Finding the overlap between everyone's vision of the "best solution"
How documented conversations anchor the design process and prevent perpetual back-and-forths