Tenchijin COMPASS KnoWaterleak

Tenchijin COMPASS KnoWaterleak

Tenchijin COMPASS KnoWaterleak is a cloud-based mapping service developed by Tenchijin (JAXA venture) designed to assist water utilities in improving the efficiency of their leak detection processes. By leveraging satellite data and AI technology, the platform analyzes and pinpoints areas with high leakage risks within 100-meter blocks, facilitating proactive maintenance and resource allocation

In response to user feedback, we introduced a new feature that displays water pipe attributes, enabling a more comprehensive assessment of leak risks and facilitating efficient maintenance planning.

Team: The project was executed by a multidisciplinary team comprising front-end and back-end engineers, data analysts, business developers and designers.

My Role: As the Product Design Lead, I was responsible for the concept design, UX design, and UI design of the new feature, ensuring seamless integration into the existing system and enhancing user experience. I led the experience vision, aligning user needs with business goals and technical feasibility.

Tasukete is a social networking platform dedicated to helping foreigners who are not fluent in Japanese. It facilitates access to services in foreign languages, fosters knowledge sharing, and provides a space for addressing questions, making life easier for those navigating a new culture.

Team: 1 Designer + 2 Engineers



My Role: Product Concept, Research, UX/UI Design, Branding.

Goals:

- Integrate pipe attribute data into the risk assessment maps to provide a comprehensive view of the infrastructure.

- Enhance the user interface to display this information intuitively without overwhelming the user.

- Ensure the new feature supports efficient decision-making for maintenance and resource allocation.​

- Allow users to interpret multiple attributes simultaneously while ensuring clarity, usability, and future scalability.

The Challenge

The Challenge

The Challenge

Municipalities are facing growing challenges managing aging water infrastructure. Manual inspection methods are time-intensive, costly, and often reactive rather than preventive.

Prior to this enhancement, users could only view water pipe attributes by selecting individual map objects, making it difficult to grasp the overall distribution of pipe properties. This limitation hindered efficient assessment and maintenance planning.

Initially, the seemingly quickest and easiest solution was to create separate layers for each attribute. However, this approach led to visual clutter, making data interpretation confusing.

Additionally, overlapping layers made it difficult to read the information effectively and presented scalability issues for future developments.

Goals:

- Integrate pipe attribute data into the risk assessment maps to provide a comprehensive view of the infrastructure.

- Enhance the user interface to display this information intuitively without overwhelming the user.

- Ensure the new feature supports efficient decision-making for maintenance and resource allocation.​

- Allow users to interpret multiple attributes simultaneously while ensuring clarity, usability, and future scalability.

Municipalities are facing growing challenges managing aging water infrastructure. Manual inspection methods are time-intensive, costly, and often reactive rather than preventive.

Prior to this enhancement, users could only view water pipe attributes by selecting individual map objects, making it difficult to grasp the overall distribution of pipe properties. This limitation hindered efficient assessment and maintenance planning.

Initially, the seemingly quickest and easiest solution was to create separate layers for each attribute. However, this approach led to visual clutter, making data interpretation confusing.

Additionally, overlapping layers made it difficult to read the information effectively and presented scalability issues for future developments.

Design Process

Design Process

Design Process

The design process followed a user-centered approach, focusing on real user needs and pain points to ensure the platform delivers meaningful and practical value.

1. Empathize: We conducted interviews with municipal engineers and infrastructure managers, and field teams to understand how they currently manage leak investigations and their biggest needs: contextual awareness, quick interpretation, and clear prioritization.

2. Define: We identified a key insight: while the risk map was useful, users lacked contextual data, such as pipe installation year and size, that could help explain the why behind certain risk hotspots.

3. Ideation: Collaborated with the multidisciplinary team to brainstorm solutions that integrate pipe attribute data with existing risk assessment maps, aiming for an intuitive and informative user interface. We explored various visualization techniques to represent data such as installation year and pipe diameter effectively. Developed wireframes and interactive low-prototypes showcasing different visualization methods, including color gradients for installation years and varying line thicknesses for pipe diameters.

4.Prototype: It was created interactive prototypes and defined:
- The visual hierarchy to highlight the most critical data first.
- The legend to ensure accessibility and clarity.
- The map interaction model, ensuring performance and ease of use on different devices and zoom levels.

5. Test: Finally, usability testing sessions were conducted with end users to gather feedback.

Solution

Solution

Solution

The newly introduced feature enhances this system by enabling users to visualize critical pipe attributes (specifically, installation year and diameter) directly on the map. This advancement allows for a more comprehensive understanding of potential leak risks and supports efficient maintenance planning.​

This feature exemplifies how thoughtful design and interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to innovative solutions that address complex infrastructure challenges.

©Tenchijin - Property Layer
Sample view of pipe data showing installation year in a five-tone blue scale and diameter in five line thickness levels.

What Sets It Apart

- Integrated Visualization: Unlike traditional methods that require separate layers for each attribute, this feature combines multiple data points into a single, cohesive view.

- Intuitive Design: Utilizes a five-tone blue scale to represent pipe age (darker blues indicate older pipes, lighter blues indicate newer ones) and varying line thicknesses to denote pipe diameter (thicker lines for larger diameters). Gray tones and dashed lines indicate unknown data, ensuring clarity even when information is incomplete.​

- Zoom-Responsive Display: The visualization adapts based on zoom level, maintaining readability and detail at various scales.

Innovative Aspects

- Simultaneous Attribute Display: By encoding multiple attributes into color and line thickness, users can assess various risk factors concurrently without toggling between layers.​

- User-Centered Design: Developed through collaboration between product designers, engineers, data analysts, and business developers, ensuring the feature meets practical needs and enhances user experience.​

- Scalability: The design accommodates future additions of other attributes without compromising clarity or usability.​

©Tenchijin - Mesh Leak Risk Layer + Property Layer

Visualization combining Mesh Leak Risk levels with key pipe attributes (Property Layer) for clearer spatial analysis.

©Tenchijin - Visualized Leak Risk Map Using AI-Powered Satellite Diagnostics

AI-driven leak risk mapping using satellite data, helping teams quickly identify and prioritize high-risk areas for inspection.

Benefits

- Enhanced Decision-Making: Provides a clearer understanding of pipeline conditions, aiding in prioritizing maintenance and inspections.​Shine Magazine

- Operational Efficiency: Reduces the time and resources needed to assess pipeline risks by presenting critical information in an accessible format.​

- Cost Savings: By improving leak detection accuracy and reducing unnecessary inspections, utilities can achieve significant cost reductions.​

If you’re interested in learning more about the product and how this feature is being used to support real-world water infrastructure management, you can explore further details on the official Tenchijin COMPASS KnoWaterleak page here.

Insights and Outcome

Insights and Outcome

Insights and Outcome

The implementation of this feature revealed key insights into how visualizing multiple pipeline attributes can transform infrastructure risk assessment. By allowing users to view pipe age and diameter simultaneously through intuitive visual encoding (color gradients and line thickness) we eliminated the need for cumbersome layer switching and improved situational awareness.

The new visualization system helped users, especially water utility engineers and contractors, make quicker, more confident decisions about where and when to perform leak inspections. This not only improved operational efficiency but also contributed to cost reductions by minimizing unnecessary fieldwork.

The feature successfully addressed a critical user need for contextual, multi-attribute visualization, improving clarity and supporting faster decision-making. At the same time, it established a technically robust and modular design approach, laying the groundwork for strategically scaling the platform’s capabilities in future updates.

Overall, the project reaffirmed the power of thoughtful, scalable design (driven by user needs and cross-functional collaboration) in enabling smarter, data-informed decision-making in infrastructure management.

Tasukete

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© 2025 Denise Ventura | All Rights Reserved.

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© 2025 Denise Ventura | All Rights Reserved.

Say Hello!

© 2025 Denise Ventura | All Rights Reserved.

Say Hello!