Professional experience brief 02 of 04 · Field information design
This example comes from Michael’s prior professional work. It is not a Next Concepts client engagement.
90-second storyModule Mapping Tool
Chapter 1 of 6: The situation
Use ← → keys
Hundreds of properties. No usable field view.
I turned a 60-column export into a field view people could use.
Each field employee managed roughly 200 to 300 multifamily properties. My portfolio was usually around 300 and reached approximately 600—but the information arrived as a spreadsheet with 50 to 60 columns.
Raw export50–60 columns
Keep what matters→
Field-ready viewCoverage · capacity · units
200–300 propertiesThe typical portfolio size the tool had to make understandable.≈600 at peakThe approximate size of my own portfolio at its largest.
Getting to the map became its own job
People had to reconstruct the view before they could use the information.
Before employees could see their properties geographically, they had to remove columns manually. One inconsistent change could break an existing map, force a rebuild, or introduce an error. Some people simply stopped mapping.
The raw file created avoidable work
01Manual column deletion02Broken map updates03Buried field context
What I recognized
The data needed a decision layer.
The company export and the field employee served different purposes. The source file needed to remain complete. The person planning a visit needed only the information relevant to that decision.
One dataset. Two very different jobs.
What existedComplete source fileWhat I sawA reusable decision layerWhat was neededA field-ready view
I separated the source from the view
One tab preserved the export. Another surfaced what mattered.
I created a reusable template: paste the complete export into one tab, then use a customizable pivot table to surface the property, coverage, capacity, and service information needed for the map.
See how the mapping flow worked
01Keep the source intact
The full company export stayed on its own tab instead of being edited differently by every employee.
02Surface the useful fields
The pivot view could show property, address, units, coverage, capacity, and other relevant context in the employee’s preferred order.
03Reuse the map
A consistent output could update an existing map instead of forcing people to rebuild and reformat it each time.
Raw export50–60 columns
Keep what matters→
Field-ready viewCoverage · capacity · units
01Paste the raw export02Choose the decision view03Map and refresh
A template became a field method
The easier workflow expanded who could use the information.
I maintained the templates and led recurring training for employees across the country. The approach expanded to other property datasets and was adapted by a separate fiber-internet team.
From individual shortcut to reusable method
200–300 propertiesThe typical portfolio size the tool had to make understandable.≈600 at peakThe approximate size of my own portfolio at its largest.50–60 columnsThe raw export before the useful decision view was created.National trainingRecurring sessions helped employees across the country adopt the method.
What this reveals about my work now
More information is not the same as more clarity.
I help businesses identify the view people actually need to make a decision. Often, the answer is not another platform—it is a thoughtful operating layer between the information the company stores and the work someone must perform.
