Case Study · SIERA ESG Platform
Net
Zero
Carbon
Turning one of ESG's most complex data challenges into SIERA's most commercially successful product — 3+ years as UX Lead.
Turning one of ESG's most complex data challenges into SIERA's most commercially successful product — 3+ years as UX Lead.
The Net Zero Carbon module existed before I joined — but it was overly complex, visually fragmented, and inaccessible to all but the most expert users. Charts had no clear visual grammar, pathways didn't reflect real-world interventions, and there was no hierarchy between fund-level and asset-level data.
Before any wireframe, I ran card sorting exercises to understand how users mentally organise Net Zero concepts. The result was a complete IA rebuild — from a developer-structured hierarchy to one aligned with real user workflows and scientific data requirements.
I scaled the research programme from 4 participants to 72 within my first month — growing it into a continuous mixed-methods discovery loop that directly shaped the product roadmap, not just validated decisions already made.
A critical early insight: the client who signs the contract is not always the end user. I mapped this distinction explicitly — it changed how we prioritised information hierarchy across the entire module.
Every feature in Net Zero 1.0 has a direct lineage — a user pain point, a usability session, or a support ticket. The fund-level chart redesign set the foundation everything else was built on.
Through user research I understood how planned interventions directly impact carbon intensity year-on-year. I integrated action-based pathways displaying both the BAU trajectory and the specific steps needed to meet Net Zero goals — so users could see the effect of each sustainable action in real time.
One of the hardest IA problems was defining how users move from a fund portfolio view down to an individual asset's NZC pathway without losing context. I designed a clear 4-layer flow: Fund → Asset Selection → Asset Pathway → Action Plan.
The asset pop-up card was a key usability finding — users needed carbon intensity, data quality, stranding year, agreed actions, and EPC rating all in one place without leaving the chart.
The fund-level view needed to show five data layers simultaneously — individual asset points, fund carbon intensity, BAU projection, science-based target, and action pathway — without overwhelming the user.
A/B testing validated the chart conventions: circle = complete data, triangle = uplifted/estimated, diamond = fund average. Stranding year callouts surface the most time-critical business risk directly on the chart.
Beyond the platform UI, I designed the offline client-facing NZC chart — the artefact consultants export and present directly to fund directors and investors. A different visual language: cleaner, annotation-driven, readable without platform context.
I defined critical user events, set success thresholds, and embedded tracking before each feature shipped — so we could measure whether design decisions actually landed.
NZC became SIERA's most commercially successful product. Every outcome below traces directly to a design decision made through this process.