When I joined CleverMaps, the product was still at its later stage of conception, quite unbaked and immature. It was being built on the go mainly by developers, GIS professionals and inputs from sales. The interface, user flows and analytical capabilities were prevalently based on highly specific clients' — not actual users' — needs.
The product suffered from a good deal of serious usability, consistency, discoverability and other issues. The interaction costs were massive due to the massive information overload. It was trying to provide advanced spatial analysis while omitting some very fundamental functionalities. Only a handful of people outside our team could successfully navigate the product or dig some deeper meaning from it. The friction was too high and the gap between the information on the screen and the end user was too deep.
Designing for an emerging new field was a challenging task. If CleverMaps was to be successful, the product had to be rethinked ground up on a conceptual level. I had set four main baseline rules, that became the new foundation.