Siemens - Manjusha | Portfolio 2026

Optimising Enterprise Carbon Reporting forms resulting in 70% less time for completion

TL;DR

WhatRedesigned the traditional, non-intuitive flows an dconducted usablity testing to create a new refined PCF form.

WhyEvery form change meant waiting on a developer. That dependency slowed teams in the field and kept support load high.

My roleI engaged with onboarded clients, collaborated closely with PMs and leveraged insights from client interviews and testing sessions to inform design decisions

Team1 Lead UX Designer · 1 UX Designer (me) · 1 Product Owner · 4 Developers

DurationSept 2022 - Sept 2024

Impact

Reduced time taken

Reduced task steps through layout optimization and autofill

The PCF form is the backbone of SiGreen

SiGREEN is Siemens' open, blockchain-secured network for sharing trusted product carbon footprints across the supply chain.

The Challenge

How might we

simplify the PCF form so users can create an accurate carbon footprint seamlessly — and understand the quality of the data they're sharing across industries?

Goals

Every design decision had to earn its place against a user need and a business need at once — these are the pairs I kept in view.

User goalComplete the PCF form without training or hand-holding

Business goalProtect the trust network with accurate data at the source

User goalAlways know where you are, what's left, and what a term means

Business goalAbsorb new emission types without re-engineering the form

The team built this form once, and never touched it again.

How it all started

The forgotten formBuilt once, years ago. Never touched since.

A maze of confusionConfusing language, frequent errors.

Loss of trustHigh error rates, damaged confidence.

Time to rethinkRedesign became the only option.

So I triangulated three sources — no single perspective drove the redesign:

Research with usersPM interviews with active clients.

UX auditFull form flow, self-evaluated.

Guerrilla testing8 quick, real-world tests.

Some honest answers from users

I just fill it line by line, but I'm not always sure what's needed.

Unclear expectations

— PCF-form users, research interviews

some honest answers from users

I just fill it line by line, but I’m not always sure what’s needed

Many fields are unclear or too technical. Need to always google what that means

It feels overwhelming at first glance with so many sub stages

Some sections don’t apply but I still have to fill them

It feels outdated and not intuitive.

The old form broke four usability heuristics at once.

Sample report findings from one of the user

Benchmarked against

Structured, high-stakes forms that already handle staged, standardized input — for patterns worth borrowing and pitfalls worth avoiding.

Catena

TFS

Income tax forms

Industry standards

2 workshops and 8 iterations & a lot of coffee along the way

A small glimpse of what went behind the scenes in Whiteboarding and Miro

One stage at a time, with the iX design system underneath.

The constraint: The PCF has to map exactly to the GHG Protocol standard, and bad data at this entry point poisons every downstream calculation the trust network runs. So I couldn't just drop repetitive fields; I had to simplify through sequencing, staging and grouping the same fields on Siemens' iX design system.

The hard call

Score data quality as users typeoverValidating the form only at the end

WhyUsers couldn't tell how a field affected data quality — so weak values slipped through to a trust network where one bad input skews every downstream carbon calculation.

What it changedLive good / average / poor scoring per field makes data integrity something users own while filling, not something QA catches after. That's the difference between a form and a source of truth.

A guided, staged flow

The form is split into five focused stages, shown one at a time. A persistent stepper tells users where they are and how many questions remain in each substage — so the experience reads as steady progress instead of an overwhelming wall of fields.

The form is split into five focused stages, shown one at a time. A persistent stepper tells users where they are and how many questions remain in each substage, so the experience reads as steady progress instead of an overwhelming wall of fields.

In-context glossary

A dedicated glossary lets users look up unfamiliar technical terms in place, keeping the form clean while still supporting people seeing these terms for the first time.

Lifecycle stages & emissions

Emissions are grouped by lifecycle stage with a clear visual hierarchy, so the redundant, repeated flows collapse into one scannable structure. The schema stays flexible enough to absorb new emission types later.

Error recovery

Errors surface exactly where they happen, flagged on the specific substage and mirrored on its parent stage, so users can pinpoint and fix what's wrong without hunting back and forth through the whole form.

Preview & edit

A final preview summarizes the whole PCF and lets users edit inline, without dropping back into the flow.

A final preview summarises the whole PCF and lets users edit inline, without dropping back into the flow.

PCF Verification

A final preview summarizes the whole PCF and lets users edit inline, without dropping back into the flow.

Data Quality Indicators

Data quality moves from a vague percentage to 4 states with parameters on where its leading and bad, Excellent, Good, Average, and Poor.

Outcome

Measured in moderated usability testing across the five redesigned stages, against the original form as baseline.

less time to complete the form

fewer steps to submit a PCF

We used the iX design system throughout and checked for accessibility, but real-scenario testing is what would surface the interaction problems we can't see yet.

Learnings & Takeaways

Working on one of the product's most-used features was both challenging and gratifying — here's what it taught me.

Cross-collaboration matters more than solo craftAligning with developers, PMs, and stakeholders throughout shaped the outcome as much as any individual design decision.

Continuous improvement beats a perfect first draftEvery iteration was informed by real feedback and testing, not assumption — that's what got the form to ship-ready.

Curious to know more?

This is one part of a larger platform revamp. Happy to walk through the details behind it if you're interested. See more of my work below.

NEXT PROJECT

Optimising Enterprise Carbon Reporting forms resulting in 70% less time for completion

Optimising Enterprise Carbon Reporting forms resulting in 70% less time for completion

Curious to know more?

Curious to know more?

Before you go, leave a doodle/note for me or take a little piece of my hometown with you.

& a lot of caffeine

Before you go, leave a doodle/note for me or take a little piece of my hometown with you.

& a lot of caffeine

Before you go, leave a doodle/note for me or take a little piece of my hometown with you.