CASE 02 / PLATFORM + MOBILE — SCM GROUP
Maestro Connect
OP 10
Context
SCM Group builds the machines that cut, shape, and finish wood at industrial scale. Maestro Connect is the software layer that sits on top of that hardware — the IoT platform that tells a shop what its machines are doing, when they’ll need attention, and where production is slipping.
The product existed, but it had grown feature-first. It displayed data faithfully and explained almost nothing. Operators were reading raw values and graphs and doing the interpretation in their heads.
OP 20
Problem
A monitoring tool that shows numbers without meaning shifts the cognitive load onto the person least able to carry it — the operator mid-shift with a line to keep running. The platform was technically complete and practically hard to act on.
My job, leading the design team, was to reframe the product around decisions rather than data: what does this person need to know, right now, to keep the shop moving?
OP 30
Process
We worked from the floor up. With service engineers, shop owners, and the SCM product team, we mapped the real questions people brought to the screen: alarms and maintenance, production throughput, machine health over time.
From that we built a design system that could carry the whole platform. A component library, clear data-visualisation rules, and interaction patterns that scaled from a single machine to a full fleet. Automated processes replaced steps people used to reconstruct by hand.
CLIENT UI UNDER NDA — SYSTEM SHOWN AS SCHEMATIC
OP 40
Mobile
The people responsible for a shop’s output are rarely sitting at a desk. They’re on the floor, between machines, or off-site entirely. The platform lived on the desktop; the decisions it supported did not. I designed the companion app from a blank canvas — the sole UI/UX designer on the project.
A mobile companion isn’t the desktop shrunk down. The context is glanceable, one-handed, often interrupted — so I built the app around the moments that pull someone toward their phone: a maintenance date approaching, a ticket changing status, production drifting from plan. Each became a fast, self-contained flow, in a visual language faithful to the desktop platform. One system, two contexts.
OP 50
Outcome
Maestro Connect went from a data readout to a working tool — one that woodworking professionals now use across more than 40 countries to run production, plan maintenance, and catch problems before they stop a line. And its core value travels: production, maintenance calendars, and ticket status, unhooked from the control room.
Just as important, the design system outlived the project. The team can keep extending the platform without the interface drifting apart.