Criteria provides cost and carbon estimating services to major infrastructure managers worldwide and licenses software for engineering teams to do the same. Their work aligns with regulatory frameworks such as PAS 2080, which mandates accurate carbon reporting in major construction projects.

The 'carbon application' — a standalone tool for measuring and reporting emissions — had reached an alpha release stage but, regrettably, user feedback was poor. The interface was cumbersome, the UX ill-suited to its expert audience, and performance hindered by numerous design inefficiencies.

Vigo’s role was to supplement Criteria’s in-house development team with the specialist skills necessary to facilitate the rapid redesign of the application’s front-end with a tight focus on usability and efficiency.

The discovery process for this reinvigoration comprised of two key research tracks:

1. Extended observation sessions with estimating engineers, watching them perform real tasks and listening to their commentary.

2. Identifying the core challenge: unlike consumer apps, this tool required dense data displays, minimal scrolling, and precise interaction patterns optimised for repetitive, specialised workflows.

Armed with the insight harvested from the research phase, Vigo audited the alpha UI and began re-imagining its core screens.

The primary goals for this process included maximising data visibility without sacrificing clarity and designing flexible, high-contrast, well-structured data tables. Alongside this, the team also worked on the technical underpinnings necessary for supporting background processing for large tasks, with clear user notifications to avoid blocking workflows as this was a key driver of user frustration.

The team delivered a React-based design system, enabling the dev team to quickly build and scale the updated UI within the existing stack.

The Vigo project team comprised a senior product strategist, lead UX and UI designers, additional design support, a producer, and a senior front-end developer. Collaboration with the client’s dev team ensured designs aligned with both technical constraints and performance optimisation strategies.

The engagement - carried out at pace for a demanding and discerning client - proved highly rewarding. Our small team delivered high-fidelity flows and a React based component library, prototypes of revised features for validation with stakeholders and a performance-ready UI framework that improved usability while supporting the vast datasets inherent to the work.

The redesigned carbon application now offers estimating engineers a faster, more efficient, and more intuitive tool — one built for the demands of their profession and the scale of the projects they manage.