Back in 2018 Autodesk acquired PlanGrid and a few other companies to help build out their construction unit. This unification also saw the unification of markup solutions from PlanGrid and BIM360.

The two main markup solutions were from PlanGrid and BIM360 during the unification efforts.

Each platform had its own differences but also shared commonalities.

PlanGrid was much more mature on mobile, but BIM360 was more mature on web. The takeaway from this was that we needed to find a common ground across web and mobile while keeping the experience clean.

Each worker and company uses markups differently. Even between the field and office. Examples of use are like taking notes, tracking progress, adding photos during site walks and more.

We interviewed 8 different customers. Including sub contractors and general contractors to see how different type of users were using markups.

1 ) Customers often use BlueBeam (third party markup tool) alongside PlanGrid/BIM360. They often had comments like "can you just do what BlueBeam does." Thus making us consider how we can build more parity.
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2) Complexity is a issue with the old markup experiences. Customers are often having to make markups in a hurry and therefore need quick interactions to get thoughts down and move on.

3) Markups are mostly used for communication purposes. Such as to higher ups or to other teams. Having more communication mechanisms baked in will help teams.

First piece of exploration was how can we bring a unfied viewer together that can simply house complex data while keeping content easy to consume. As a result we developed a region layout to contain information.

This was a collaborative effort amongst other viewer teams and 2 other designers.

I spent a lot of time exploring how can we bring PlanGrid & BIM360 experiences together in a simple to use interface that contains complex capabilities but allows fast development.

Early on we made a list of all markup shapes and actions we want in our new unified experience. From there we listed out how each would look and behave. This making it easy for engineering to adjust the system to support current complexity and future complexity.

As we began exploring we began to see new things needing to be addressed such as managing large amount of markups, being able to use markups for progress tracking, and more. As a result we revisited our IA and build a more robust framework to handle how to navigate through markups, and edit markups.

- Unified 2 separate markup experiences into one service
- Led redesign of markup types in order to improve legibility and interaction
- Helped set direction for a unified viewer framework alongside 2 other designers
- Designed a framework for future feature work adoption such as for tracking construction progress through markups and interacting with assets on a blueprint sheet.