Astha Dhami

Building Sustainable Solutions at Scale

How I led end-to-end UX design and product ownership to empower 100+ sustainability managers and eliminate hours of manual support work

Overview -

During my 8-month internship with Brightly (a Siemens company), I led the end-to-end design of a critical sustainability platform integration while balancing dual responsibilities as both UX Designer and Product Owner.

Working alongside managers and team leads who championed ownership and autonomy, I conducted user research that influenced organizational-level decisions and delivered features now used by Sustainability Managers, Implementation Partners, and Building Managers across North America.

While the contents of my work are under NDA, this case study highlights the main scope of work and outcomes. If you'd like to dive deeper and see the actual designs - email me!

My Role

UX Designer & Product Owner

Duration

8 months (May 2025 - Current)

Company

Brightly, a Siemens Company

Skills

User Research, Prototyping, Product Strategy, Cross-functional Leadership

My Key Responsibilities In This Role

01

User Research

Performed competitive analysis and workflow mapping.
Led user interviews, surveys, and usability testing for Energy Manager and ESPM Integration.
Gathered and synthesized user requirements from internal service teams and end-users to identify pain points and opportunities.

02

UX Design

Led the design process for Brightly’s energy monitoring platform integration, from designing wireframes and user flows, to iterating based on feedback, and delivering final designs with user stories for development.

Led the design process for Brightly’s energy monitoring platform integration, from designing wireframes and user flows, to iterating based on feedback, and delivering final designs with user stories for development.

03

Client Feedback Integration with Pendo

Led the migration of historical client feedback into Pendo, Brightly’s product analytics and feedback tool.
Completed Pendo Essentials for Workforce Apps certification to ensure effective implementation.

Led the migration of historical client feedback into Pendo, Brightly’s product analytics and feedback tool.
Completed Pendo Essentials for Workforce Apps certification to ensure effective implementation.

04

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Worked closely with UX designers, developers, and product owners to align design decisions with technical feasibility and business goals, ensuring smooth handoff from design to development.
Leveraged my software development background to identify APIs and provide technical recommendations during PO meetings.

Worked closely with UX designers, developers, and product owners to align design decisions with technical feasibility and business goals, ensuring smooth handoff from design to development.
Leveraged my software development background to identify APIs and provide technical recommendations during PO meetings.

03

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Worked closely with UX designers, developers, and product owners to align design decisions with technical feasibility and business goals, ensuring smooth handoff from design to development.
Leveraged my software development background to identify APIs and provide technical recommendations during PO meetings.

02

UX Design

Led the design process for Brightly’s energy monitoring platform integration, from designing wireframes and user flows to iterating based on feedback, and delivering final designs with user stories for development.

03

Client Feedback Integration with Pendo

Led the migration of historical client feedback into Pendo, Brightly’s product analytics and feedback tool.
Completed Pendo Essentials for Workforce Apps certification to ensure effective implementation.

4+

Hours/week saved per user

100+

Sustainability Managers empowered

3

Major initiatives led

14

User stories written & refined

As a UX and Product Owner intern, I've been contributing to three key initiatives at Brightly that leverage both my technical background and product design skills.

01

Energy Platform User Research & Design

Led end-to-end user research for Brightly's energy consumption monitoring platform, collaborating directly with services teams to gather requirements, create wireframes, and translate user feedback into actionable features and user stories.

02

Facilities-Energy Benchmarking Integration

Conducted competitive analysis and technical feasibility assessment for integrating Brightly's facilities management platform with ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, leveraging software development expertise to identify optimal APIs and guide product decisions.

03

Pendo Integration & Feedback Consolidation

Spearheaded the migration of external client feedback into Pendo's analytics platform, earning Pendo Essentials certification and establishing a unified feedback system that enables user voting on feature priorities.

01

Energy Platform User Research & Design

Snapshots of what I worked on

Learnings

Embracing Change: Don’t Get Attached to Every Design

Early on, I learned that it’s perfectly normal for some designs to get descoped or set aside. Rather than taking this personally, I recognized that design decisions are driven by business needs and changing priorities. Maintaining flexibility and focusing on the project’s broader goals allowed me to grow as a resilient and strategic designer.

Adapting to Constraints: Prioritizing What Matters Most

Projects often move fast and sometimes limited budgets and tight timelines mean that not every step can be executed as planned. For example, after initial user testing and implementing feedback, we didn’t have the bandwidth for a second round of formal testing. To ensure some level of insight, I guided a fresh team member through the new designs, asking them to evaluate the experience from a user’s perspective. It wasn’t perfect—but was a practical solution given our constraints.

Knowing When to Push Back: Advocating for Users

It’s important to adapt, but sometimes you have to stand your ground, even under pressure. On one project, internal process stakeholders had already reviewed our UI, and tight deadlines made skipping further user testing tempting. My team and I insisted on a quick round of testing with end users, balancing project urgency with the need for real feedback. This approach ensured our designs genuinely met user needs before launch.

Leveraging Tools for Efficiency: The Value of Auto Layout

Mastering features like auto layout in our design tools greatly accelerated my workflow. It became significantly easier to iterate on designs, incorporate feedback, and prepare files for handoff. This efficiency allowed for rapid refinements and greater overall team agility throughout the project.