Construction Management Software
I worked across Ingenious.Build's financial modules, with the deepest ownership in the Budget Module, one of the platform's most critical areas. This case study focuses on how I redesigned dense budget workflows to make them faster to build and easier to navigate, without losing the control teams relied on.
The Challenge & Goal
Construction budgets are inherently complex: multi-level cost structures, contracts, invoices, approvals, imports, and changing business rules all connect in one workflow.
The goal was to make that complexity easier to scan, navigate, and act on, without removing the financial depth teams needed to trust the numbers.
Design priorities
Make complexity manageable
Keep the full financial structure, but make it easier to scan, understand, and act on.
Keep the budget connected to the modules around it
Sync the budget with the modules it feeds into, so users can act without leaving their flow or re-entering the same data.
Increase density without chaos
The budget already held a lot of information and functionality, and clients kept asking for more. It all had to fit without making the table feel overwhelming.
Build trust in the system
Bugs and weak UX had made people unsure about the system, so removing those small gaps was part of the work.
Design for speed and accuracy
Make every step clear enough that people move fast without guessing or asking for help.
I worked from three inputs: usability testing, client requests through the PM, and my own UX audits. I used AI to organize findings from usability sessions and build testable prototypes faster.
Find recurring friction
Look for problems repeated across testing, client feedback, and the existing interface.
Prioritize by impact
Sequence everyday workflow problems before isolated feature requests.
Prototype the risk
Test discoverability, information density, and trust before implementation.
Ship focused releases
Improve one workflow at a time instead of turning the work into one large redesign.
The Work
The redesigned budget
The old view wasted space: giant cells, few rows, endless scrolling. I made the default far denser, with an ultra-compact mode on top. Building got faster too: inline creation with suggestions from past cost codes, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop hierarchy, so people build budgets like the spreadsheet they already think in, not a modal for every line.
01 · Commitments
Creating a commitment – turning a budget line into a contract, bid, or invoice – meant knowing which cells to dig into, and several clicks. Testing was blunt: users couldn't find it. Now it's one visible action, with a clear choice of what to create.
02 · AI-powered import
Setting up a budget meant re-keying hundreds of line items by hand. So I built two import paths: an AI one that reads a file and builds the budget automatically, and a manual one, because testing showed not everyone trusts AI with their numbers.
…and many more.
Want to know more? Let's talk ↗Outcomes
The releases addressed recurring problems identified through testing, UX audits, and client requests. Users navigated the budget more easily, found actions they had previously missed, and described the redesign as more flexible.
"I love these new designs. This budget looks much more flexible and it's less of a learning curve."Usability test participant
Reflection
The challenge was twofold. First, the budget had to present a huge amount of business-critical information without overwhelming users. I needed to make the interface clear and easy to understand while keeping the information users needed visible.
At the same time, I had to decide what to prioritize. Alongside a steady stream of feature requests from key clients, shared with the team through our product manager, there were significant UX gaps in the existing experience that also needed attention. I had to weigh business value, user impact, and urgency to decide what to solve first.
This experience taught me how important it is to balance new business needs with improvements to the existing product, and to consider both user and business impact when setting priorities.
