Romet
2024
Enterprise SaaS
Consultant Design Lead
Energy Array
What does it take to turn an engineer-built proof of concept into a full enterprise SaaS platform?
01 — Context
An enterprise platform, validated in code first.
Energy Array is Romet's data management platform for utility providers — customers, billing, contracts, assets, and demand-response programs in one ecosystem. Before securing the budget for a full build, the concept had been validated with a proof of concept built directly in code, with no designers involved.
Through 7 Seas, a Los Angeles-based agency, I joined as design lead to turn that POC into a real product experience.
Creating any entity — programs, customers, assets — happens in a side sheet: the table stays in view, so you never lose sight of what already exists. Conditional fields only appear when a toggle makes them relevant, keeping dense forms feeling light.
02 — My Role
Design lead, from architecture to interface.
I owned UX, UI, and information architecture — partnering with 7 Seas' founder on ideation and working directly with Romet's lead engineer in recurring remote sessions. By the time I handed the project over in mid-2024, the navigation model, interaction patterns, and UI foundation were established — the base the next design team built on.
01
Understand
Stakeholder sessions
POC audit
Domain mapping
IA opportunities
02
Structure
Information architecture
Navigation model
Wayfinding
Screen flows
03
Design & validate
UI design
Interactive prototype
Stakeholder testing
UI foundation
Information Architecture
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
Stakeholder Validation
Design Foundations
03 — The Problem
The POC proved the technology — not the experience.
Built by engineers on stock Material Design, the POC did its job: it validated the platform. But as a product for daily utility operations, it worked against its users in four ways:
01
Deep data, no wayfinding
Customers, service agreements, and service points nest several levels deep — the UI gave no sense of where you were.
02
No visual hierarchy
Dense dashboards where every widget competed for attention — critical signals carried the same weight as secondary data.
03
Stock UI, enterprise needs
Default Material components weren't built for workflows like program enrollment, demand-response events, and asset operations.
04
Navigation that didn't scale
A flyout-menu structure that strained as the platform grew past a dozen functional areas — most of them hidden until hover.
Dashboard to aggregator details, before and after. The POC hides the route inside hover-only flyout menus; the redesign puts navigation in plain sight and gives every level its own focused view.
04 — Before / After
From default Material to a purpose-built enterprise UI.
Before
Stock Material Design, built straight in code
Flyout menus hiding the platform's structure
No wayfinding across deep hierarchies
Dashboards without visual hierarchy
Generic components stretched to enterprise use
Single hard-coded brand
After
Purpose-built UI with its own token system
Persistent sidebar exposing every module at once
Icon- and color-coded breadcrumbs for deep navigation
Dashboards: highlights first, trends below, detail on demand
Patterns designed for utility-scale workflows
White-label theming for each utility's brand
Before: the engineer-built POC. Getting from the dashboard to a single service point meant working through dense, look-alike tables — every screen carried the same weight, with nothing to guide the eye.
After: the same journey, redesigned. An interactive map turns customer search spatial, each level gets its own focused dashboard, and icon-coded breadcrumbs keep you oriented from customer to service point.
05 — The Solution
One system of patterns, not 280 screens.
Icon- and color-coded breadcrumbs turn deep hierarchies into a legible trail — from customer to service agreement to service point, you always know where you are.
The same icon- and color-coded trail shows up in Programs and Assets, too — one pattern to learn, not one per module.
Creating an asset or scheduling a demand-response event follows the same guided, step-based pattern. Setup never feels like starting over.
06 — Outcome
A foundation built to outlast my time on it.
13
Functional areas unified under a single navigation and UI system
Figma · 2023–2024
280+
Screens designed and connected into one interactive prototype for stakeholder validation
Interactive prototype
0 → 1
From engineer-built POC to a UX foundation the next design team extended
Design foundation
Millions
Of end customers and devices the platform is designed to scale to
Source: rometlimited.com
"Gustavo took a platform of enormous complexity and gave it a structure people could actually navigate. The foundation he set is what every designer after him built on."
Raphael McDonnell
Founder & CEO at 7 Seas