Acelab's Smart Docs
Sending Material Requests to Manufacturers
0→1 Design & Strategy · Design System · Stakeholder Alignment
Sent Material Requests to MFR's
Smart Docs is a live-linked canvas editor built inside Acelab's Materials Hub letting architects turn material schedules, and information into polished client deliverables in one place, with data that updates itself.
It's a smart material intellegence platform where in Acelab becomes your respository and source of truth.
Shipped as a Pro-Acleab Enterpirse feature.
6+
Enterprise firms Adopted:
AECOM, JLL, HOK, Sasaki and more..
2
Mapping directions.
Both first-class.
One modal.
$→
Became a premium paid feature. Direct revenue driver for Acelab.
Team & my role
PRODUCT
Web Based Live Canvas Editor for architects to make documents
TIMELINE
Q1 2024 - Q4 2024 (Launched as a Pro Feature for Acelab Material Hub)
MY ROLE
I led design on Document Builder from the first discovery conversation to v1 launch, and continued through the v1.1 iteration that brought in Binder 2.0 and collaboration infrastructure.
Ran the feature scoping that defined the MVP scope, led design progression using Claude & Figma.
Wrote product requirements and ticketed directly into Linear alongside engineering.
Worked closely with Product & Eng to define phasing and cut scope, and deliver POC.
Created marketing brief, product launch plan and presented the design to Stakeholders pre-launch.
TEAM
Purti Hardikar - Lead Product Designer & PM (v1 + v1.1)
Patricia Causey - Director of Product
Stephen Sandberg - Product Manager (Reviewer)
Nolan Tremelling - CTO/ Eng Lead
Jessi Shin - Full Stack Intern
Elodie - Full Stack Developer
SKILLS
Figma — lo-fi, mid-fi, hi-fi, component design, annotations, handoff
FigJam — feature scoping workshop, user journey mapping (PROD-135)
Claude - High-fidelity interactions, iterations, ideas & ticket writing
tl.draw — prototyped for collaboration sync layer with the help of tl.draw library
Linear — Product roadmap, Milestone scoping, sprint tracking
IMPACT
Released across the Acleab Material Hub for both Enterprise and Consumer users, as a pro paid feature.
Platfrom State
The Problem, the quick TL;DR
Architects were leaving Acelab to build client deliverables in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Excel — manually copying product names, images, and specs. When a product changed in the schedule, nothing updated downstream. The presentation was always a version behind.
"Every time we swap a product, I rebuild the whole presentation.
It's the same data; just in three different places."
— Architect, Acelab customer · CX channel
3-5h
lost per revision, rebuilding a presentation after a single product swap
100%
Of that rework duplicating data that already existed in Schedules
0
Native tools to produce a client-ready deliverable inside Material Hub.
So, how might we leverage
live data from schedules automatically to generate and sync all downstream project documentation?
Platfrom State
A canvas editor that knows your materials.
Smart Docs is a live-linked canvas editor built inside Acelab's Materials Hub (part of the Schedules product),
where architects turn material schedules directly into client-ready deliverables — without ever leaving the platform or re-entering data by hand.
CloseCRM was built to simplify core sales processes:
Organizing contacts and companies
Tracking activities and follow-ups
Managing deal stages
Filtering data for quick decisions
Or keep scrolling to know the design process
Platfrom State
Understanding Acelab Schedules
Acelab's Materials Hub is where architects manage, specify, and track every building material in a project.
At its core is Schedules — a live table of every specified product, with fields, images, manufacturer data, and custom columns.
Platfrom State
Schedules solved what was specified; not how to present it
All eight required product images — proof that a text-only export was never going to be enough for any of them. Five were formal contractual or certification documents, which is where the fillable-PDF requirement came from before we'd sketched a single screen.
The findings revealed more pain points than I expected and it changed the
scope of the project.
User research — in-depth interviews, n=18 participants
STORIES
Stories from teams who found clarity, moved faster, and worked with less noise.
We cut weekly status meetings in half.
Northline made project updates visible, so decisions stopped getting buried and meetings became easier to cut.
Mira Chen, Head of Product
Research Questions
Understanding the User Goals.
All eight required product images — proof that a text-only export was never going to be enough for any of them. Five were formal contractual or certification documents, which is where the fillable-PDF requirement came from before we'd sketched a single screen.
Identifying market gaps through a rigorous competitive audit, then mapping user insights onto an impact vs. effort matrix to define our product roadmap
User research — in-depth interviews, n=18 participants
Starting from what we had
We mapped every deliverable architects actually produce.
We audited workflows with power users at top firms (AECOM, HOK, JLL) to translate expert material data usage into our core feature objectives.
Different documents that architects normally created using Acelab's data
All eight required product images — proof that a text-only export was never going to be enough for any of them. Five were formal contractual or certification documents, which is where the fillable-PDF requirement came from before we'd sketched a single screen.
Insight: All documents required product image & rich data
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Canvas tools exist. AEC tools exist. We built the missing intersection.
We ran a deep-dive competitive analysis across two fronts:
Direct Competitors: Established platforms within the AEC industry for creating product submittals.
Indirect Competitors: The generic document builders and tools architects currently rely on to create submittals— representing the exact workflow our new tool aims to replace.
Identifying market gaps through a rigorous competitive audit, then mapping user insights onto an impact vs. effort matrix to define our product roadmap
Information Architecture
Understand User Flow
& Platfrom connections
The Dashboard allows users to transfer and share leads, keeping in mind that employees may need to reallocate leads at any time or add collaborators to the lead.
Identifying market gaps through a rigorous competitive audit, then mapping user insights onto an impact vs. effort matrix to define our product roadmap
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Canvas tools exist. AEC tools exist. We built the missing intersection.
We ran a deep-dive competitive analysis across two fronts:
Direct Competitors: Established platforms within the AEC industry for creating product submittals.
Indirect Competitors: The generic document builders and tools architects currently rely on to create submittals— representing the exact workflow our new tool aims to replace.
DESIGN GOAL: FUNCTIONAL | Super Admin
Admin Settings Dashboard
v1 shipped live product cards. But text boxes on the canvas — product names, manufacturer details, lead times — were still typed manually.
Design decision: Smart Fields — live-linked text that pulls directly from any schedule column and auto-updates on change.
Pick the field. Place it. Forget about it.
Interaction: The field picker lives in the inspector panel. Same pattern as picking a font size — the data is just a column, not a hardcoded value.
View of the super-admin dashboard with editing access
DESIGN GOAL: FUNCTIONAL | Other Users
Transfer &
Share leads
The Dashboard allows users to transfer and share leads, keeping in mind that employees may need to reallocate leads at any time or add collaborators to the lead.
Project Phases & Timeline
We phased the project to streamline the workflow without disrupting the schedule workspace.
This project was a massive lift for Acelab that heavily impacted the schedule for our Architect Workspace.
To maximize our time and hit our deadlines, we started with rapid, low-fidelity sketching to quickly align on a mid-fi Proof of Concept. Once we had that POC working and validated, we began layering in the fine details to build out and polish the entire workflow.
01
Dec 2025
Research & Lo-fidelity
Architects think in binders.
Chat language becomes structure: Binders → Pages → Smart Doc.
02
Feb – Mar 2026
Mid-fi + POC
Canvas beats page-flip.
tldraw POC shipped to engineering. Page-flip explicitly rejected.
03
Mar – Apr 2026
Hi-fidelity
Real data from day one.
Live product data in early hi-fi. Built confidence the system works.
What we explicitly didn't build — and why
Direction
Verdict
Reason
Page-flip canvas
rejected
Architects work spatially. Canvas always won in review.
Bi-directional editing
rejected
Schedules is the source of truth. Documents are read-only.
Standalone tool
rejected
Recreates the context-switch we were solving. A fancier PowerPoint.
Real-time collaboration
scoped
Fully designed. Scoped to v1.1 — shipped on schedule.
