When the Service IS the Infrastructure
I was brought in to design B2B & B2C services in two radically different high-stakes domains: industrial automation and digital banking infrastructure. I was introduced to a similar challenge, that started by making technically complex systems navigable for the humans inside them.
Context
Rockwell Automation is the global leader in repair and remanufacturing operations across US and Europe
The brief included building a sustainability dashboard that could help companies understand how to comply better with sustainability regulations. I was faced with foundational research exploration, no dashboard gets built without first understanding the operational reality underneath.
Team: A distributed team of 6 business strategists (Design for Sustainability) + a development squad of 10+ developers.
My role: Service & Strategic Designer
Tools: Service mapping, in-depth interviews, stakeholder management, product roadmapping, design documentation
Challenge
The challenge wasn't the dashboard, it was that no one had mapped the full service complexity first. There were a few key things that made this exploration more interesting:
Global variability: US East Coast, West Coast, Europe, and global operations each had different rhythms, constraints, and data maturity.
The domain gap: industrial automation is a highly technical field with its own language. Being an outsider was both the constraint and the advantage.
Internal politics and geographic silos made alignment on what to measure (and how) a design problem before it was a data problem
Approach
Rapid domain absorption: learned the industrial language fast enough to earn access to the real data and real conversations
Full service complexity mapping across geographies and client types.
Identified critical moments of energy and resource intensity, not just what was being measured, but where in the operation it actually mattered.
Translated findings into a strategic visualization framework: not a spec, but a decision-making tool for what the dashboard should prioritize and why.
Delivered development-ready blueprint for engineering handoff.
Outcome
Strategic visualization framework delivered
Development-ready dashboard blueprint handed off to engineering
Rockwell operations teams positioned to gain cross-site visibility into sustainability performance for the first time
The project launched on several releases that followed this strategic/foundational project. For a sneak peek of the end result, you can check this link.
Takeaways
The core learning: deep technical domain absorption is itself a research skill. The faster you become credible in the client's language, the richer the data you get access to.
Broader signal for your positioning: this project shows you can operate in B2B enterprise environments where the complexity is real, the stakes are high, and there's no shortcut to earning trust before getting to insight.
© 2026 Enrique Peralta. All rights reserved.