During my time at BucketLabs, I contributed to the development of innovative smart city solutions, aimed at creating better urban environments through data-driven insights and collaboration. BucketLabs was focused on breaking down data silos to enable informed decision-making across urban systems—whether social, physical, or natural. We aimed to provide a holistic understanding of city dynamics, integrating diverse data sources to offer meaningful insights for city stakeholders.

BucketLabs envisioned a future where cities continuously measure and understand their vitality, enabling data-driven planning and transformation. Our goal was to create a product called City Life, which could baseline a city’s infrastructure and social fabric before major transformations, allowing us to measure and demonstrate the benefits of those changes.

We worked with city councils and urban planners to identify and address the key challenges of urbanisation, focusing on providing tools that enabled cities to make more informed decisions regarding housing, green spaces, and transport. Rather than offering a generic solution, our approach involved tailoring our platforms to meet the specific needs of each urban environment.

• DataLab: DataLab was one of the core tools developed at BucketLabs to tackle urban challenges. It allowed users to break down data silos by integrating different datasets and providing visual and analytical insights into various aspects of urban life. DataLab was key to understanding and managing housing, green spaces, and urban transport, making the decision-making process data-driven and transparent.
• Perspectives: Perspectives was designed to give stakeholders an overview of how different city systems interact. It provided a holistic view of a city's social, physical, and natural environments, allowing urban planners to see the bigger picture. By offering visual insights into interdependent systems, Perspectives facilitated a deeper understanding of urban dynamics.
• Commons - Smart Nation Platform: This platform aimed at fostering collaboration across cities, government entities, and vendors. It enabled knowledge-sharing and collaborative planning, helping different stakeholders address urban challenges collectively. The platform focused on ensuring that data and insights were accessible and actionable, supporting decision-makers in building resilient and sustainable cities.

At BucketLabs, I served as Head of Design, where I led the efforts in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. My focus was on ensuring that our platforms were not only technically robust but also easy to use for our target audiences, ranging from urban planners to city councils and vendors.

As the Head of Design, I was responsible for establishing a design that brought consistency across all our products. I translated complex data and insights into visual formats that were easy to navigate and understand, ensuring that our users could draw actionable conclusions without requiring specialised technical skills.

I also played a critical role in the strategic direction of our product development. I worked with leadership to prioritise features that had the highest impact on our customers' ability to make informed decisions. This required balancing user needs with the technical realities of smart city infrastructure and ensuring that our design approach aligned with the overarching product strategy.

One of the key challenges we faced was integrating data from various urban systems—each with its own complexities and data structures—into a cohesive platform that could be easily understood by non-experts. To address this, I designed modular visualisation tools that allowed users to filter, group, and explore data in ways that made sense to them. By offering intuitive interfaces, we made it possible for users to derive value from the data without needing deep analytical skills.

Another challenge was promoting collaboration across stakeholders with different priorities and levels of expertise. The Commons Smart Nation Platform was instrumental in addressing this issue by creating a shared space where stakeholders could come together to solve city-wide problems. I focused on creating an inclusive and user-friendly experience, ensuring that everyone—from city planners to vendors—could contribute and benefit from the platform.

We also faced the challenge of demonstrating the long-term benefits of smart city investments. We created a framework for measuring and visualising the impact of urban changes over time, allowing stakeholders to see the tangible benefits of their investments in city infrastructure.

BucketLabs' platforms provided city stakeholders with the ability to make evidence-based decisions that improved urban living conditions. DataLab enabled city councils to better manage green spaces and housing by visualising areas of need and facilitating targeted interventions. Perspectives offered comprehensive insights into how different urban systems interacted, leading to more informed planning and improved resource allocation.

The Commons Smart Nation Platform aimed to help foster a collaborative approach to urban problem-solving. It brought together diverse stakeholders, enabling them to share insights and work collectively on improving urban environments. As a result, city councils were able to implement more coordinated and effective strategies to address complex challenges, from housing shortages to transportation inefficiencies.

Our work demonstrated the power of baselining urban environments and measuring transformation. By providing city planners with clear, before-and-after metrics, we were able to show the real-world benefits of smart city projects, thus justifying further investment and fostering confidence in data-driven urban planning.

• Holistic Urban Planning: By breaking down data silos, BucketLabs enabled a more comprehensive understanding of urban environments, allowing cities to make informed decisions across different systems.
• User-Centred Design: The focus on user-friendly interfaces meant that our platforms could be used by a wide range of stakeholders, ensuring that data was accessible and actionable.
• Collaborative Solutions: Through platforms like the Commons Smart Nation, we facilitated collaboration among cities, government entities, and vendors, helping to build resilient and sustainable urban environments.