DHI 

Company: DHI group

My role: UX / UI

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DHI Group is one of the world's leading water research and engineering organisations, founded in Denmark in 1964. With over 1,000 specialists operating across 30 offices in 140 countries, DHI develops software, advisory services, and digital tools that help governments, utilities, and engineers manage the planet's most critical water challenges — from flood modelling and coastal protection to water quality monitoring and climate adaptation.

 

At DHI, I designed digital tools operating at the intersection of engineering, environmental science, and advanced simulation technologies.

The products supported hydrologists, engineers, environmental specialists, and decision-makers working with complex data models and climate-related systems. Designing in this space required translating technical depth into usable, structured, and reliable digital experiences. 

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Project: Match Water Solutions - b2b portal, Sustainable Development Goal 6 

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Goal: Design an intuitive, scalable B2B platform that connects water project buyers with verified technology providers — and communicates the global sustainability mission behind every match.
 

• Research 

• Stakeholders interviews

• End-to-end UX/UI (web + mobile)

• Design system — tokens, components, and documentation built from scratch

• User testing

• Dev handoff

• SDG integration — visual communication of the project's alignment with UN SDG 6

Focus: Web, Mobile, Design System

Team: Stakeholders, Developers, 

Tools: Figma, Storybook, Miro

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Project background

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DHI Group had spent six decades becoming the global authority on water science. Match Water Solutions is their B2B digital marketplace — a platform connecting water technology providers with the engineering firms, municipalities, and utilities who need them. The platform served professionals working directly toward UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation for All.

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When I joined DHI in 2019, the platform existed but lacked a coherent design direction. There was no design system, no unified visual language, and no dedicated UX function. Each part of the interface had been built independently, resulting in a fragmented experience that did not reflect the technical authority or environmental mission of the organisation behind it.

My task was to redesign the portal from the ground up — the website, the mobile experience, and the foundational design system — while ensuring the result communicated DHI's connection to the SDGs and its role in delivering real-world water impact.

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My task was to redesign the portal end-to-end — the website, the mobile experience, and build the foundation that would make it scalable.

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Designed in support of Clean Water and Sanitation for All

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Match Water Solutions was developed as part of DHI's active commitment to the United Nations 2030 Agenda. The platform directly addresses SDG 6 — Clean Water and Sanitation — by accelerating the connection between water challenges and the technology solutions needed to solve them.

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SDG 6 targets universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030. Progress is currently off track globally. By enabling faster, smarter matching between water project owners and proven technology providers, Match Water Solutions helps close the gap between available innovation and the communities that need it most — across 40+ countries.

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Design implications:
- The platform had to communicate authority and trust, not just functionality
- Visual language needed to reference water, environment, and sustainability — not generic B2B
- The SDG 6 badge was treated as a key trust signal for both buyers and providers on the platform

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In support of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 Clean Water and Sanitation.
The content of this publication has not been approved by the United Nations and does not reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.

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Design process

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Each phase built directly on the last. Research defined the problem precisely enough to avoid redesigning the wrong things a trap that's easy to fall into on platforms serving expert users.

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Methods used

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- Stakeholder interviews with DHI project leads and product managers
- Competitor analysis across B2B marketplace platforms in adjacent sectors
- User interviews with water project procurement leads and technology providers
- Heuristic evaluation of the existing portal
- Information architecture mapping
- Iterative wireframing (lo → mid → hi fidelity)
- Mobile prototype testing using Figma prototype on device
- Developer handoff and component documentation

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Primary Users

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Water Project Buyers (municipalities, utilities, engineering consultancies)
Water Technology Providers (startups, product companies, engineering firms)
DHI's internal project teams and sustainability coordinators

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Two very different users - one shared platform

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​Interviews with project buyers and technology providers revealed that the platform was failing both groups — but in completely different ways. Buyers couldn't quickly evaluate match quality. Providers had no visibility into what buyers were actually looking for. These two failure modes required distinct design responses within a single interface.

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​Key Insights

- Match quality and credibility signals matter more than breadth — users trusted fewer, better-qualified results over long unsorted lists
- 38% of initial platform sessions were on mobile, yet the mobile experience was entirely unusable
- Providers wanted visibility into the types of projects being searched — not just being "listed"
- Buyers needed technical specificity in provider profiles — geography, project scale, certification, past work
- The SDG context increased platform credibility for sustainability-focused procurement teams
- There was no consistent visual language across the platform — every section had been built in isolation

 

UX Challanges

- How to surface complex matching logic in a way that feels simple and trustworthy
- Designing for two very different user types (buyers and providers) within a single platform
- Making the SDG mission visible without it feeling like decorative branding
- Building a design system where none existed, while also designing the product simultaneously
- Creating a mobile experience that worked for expert users scanning on the go
- Defining information hierarchy for data-heavy provider profiles

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Mapping the path from challenge to connection - user flow

Before designing any screens, I mapped the buyer's full journey — from landing to connected. This revealed two critical drop points: the search results page (no confidence in relevance) and the provider profile (not enough technical detail to qualify).

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Wireframe progression

Each fidelity stage served a different purpose. Lo-fi was about structure and flow — nothing polished, everything open to change. Mid-fi introduced hierarchy and real interaction patterns. Hi-fi brought the design system to life and gave developers something they could build from directly.

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Design 

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From generic listing to match-score-led discovery

The original platform showed providers in an unsorted table — same visual weight on every row, no signal about relevance. Users had to read every entry to assess fit. Match score became the primary visual signal on every provider card. Cards were restructured around the three questions buyers asked first: "Can they do this project type?", "Have they done it before?", "Are they in the right region?" The score hierarchy transformed the platform from a directory into an intelligent recommendation system.

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From desktop-only to native mobile discovery

38% of platform sessions were on mobile — yet there was no mobile design at all. The desktop layout simply collapsed on a phone, making core interactions (search, filter, connect) nearly impossible on touch. I designed a 4-screen native-feeling prototype: Home, Search, Provider Detail with a capability radar chart, and Profile. Tested on-device using Figma Mirror. Mobile sessions went from near-zero task completion to a full discovery-to-connection flow.

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Outcome and Reflections

The redesigned Match Water Solutions platform transformed a fragmented directory into a coherent, mission-driven B2B experience — one that communicates the environmental stakes of the work as clearly as it communicates the technical capabilities of its providers.

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Outcome:
- Mobile experience rebuilt from nothing to a fully testable prototype — 38% of users now had a viable path through the platform
- Design system at DHI — adopted across the Match Water platform and used as a foundation for two subsequent products
- SDG 6 integration turned an invisible commitment into a visible trust signal — particularly impactful for sustainability-led procurement teams
- Developer handoff went from back-and-forth clarification to a documented, token-based handoff that engineering teams described as the clearest they had received

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What I Learned:
- Designing a B2B platform for a mission-driven organisation means the "why" has to be as visible as the "what" — users care about the context of the work, not just the tool
- Building a design system while simultaneously designing the product is hard — but shipping both together creates natural alignment between system and product decisions
- Mobile is rarely an afterthought in B2B when you look at the actual session data — it was the most impactful single improvement we could make
- For platforms serving expert users, trust signals matter more than visual novelty. Match score, SDG alignment, and verified project histories converted better than aesthetic changes alone

This project taught me that the best B2B design is not about simplification — it's about building credibility, reducing friction, and making complex information accessible without stripping out the detail that experts need to make decisions.
 

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