10 Lessons for designers

10 Lessons I learned from my first software development job

By Marco A. Aguirre

Published 23 Jan 2023.

Introduction

It’s been 2 weeks since my last day at covetool. This morning I dropped off my laptop to a second repair shop, after having already spent $270 earlier in the week to replace the battery. Now armed with just my phone, I’ve got a couple of days to sit around, write new resumes, add portfolio entries, and figure out the mobile Docs app. To showcase my experience at covetool, I thought I would add some variety to my website and make this post more beholden to the journey. The structure follows a semi chronological account of each major feature launch and my numerous growth moments as a young designer and later manager of an award winning product team. As a perpetual student of all things, I always enjoyed these story-time listicles and found them very useful while onboarding new team members or as reminders to get back to the basics.

If you enjoy this text please and want to discuss it or share similar writing with me, feel free to connect on any of my social media platforms. I’m always open for discourse and happy to learn what others have to think on this topic.

Part 1 - Overview

The analysis tool(s) was the first product suite developed at covetool. At the time of joining there were only 3 products in existence. In the next couple of years, my team and I would add dozens more features, capabilities, and connections that would transform the platform into one of the top building analysis software in the industry today. Alongside the analysis tool(s), many other product suites were also developed, however, the contents of this article will focus primarily on the various components of the original suite.

Context for the Uninitiated

covetool is a B2B SaaS company based in Atlanta, GA developing tools for architects, engineers, contractors, and developers. The web-based application offers a suite of products in which building design teams can run rapid computer-aided simulations to generate data that will help advance decisions and conversation around for ROI, material selection, carbon reduction, energy savings, occupant comfort, risk mitigation, and more.

In 2018, Marco joined covetool as employee #03, and was with the company through four office relocations, two-to-three capital raises, and numerous change management cycles. In 2021, the team was awarded the prestigious R+D award from Architects Magazine for its innovative product and design.

Today, I (Marco), look back at the journey and have collected some insights that I wanna share with you today.

Table of Contents - 10 Features, 10 Lessons

The cove.tool engine, Baseline Energy, and Optimization - Building on a solid foundation
Climate Report - Explain it like I’m 5
Geometry and plugins - Fitting into an existing workflow
Water Use Calculator - Counting easy wins
Facade tools - Recontextualize the approach
3D Analysis tools - Prioritizing wants vs needs and defending that decision (choosing a path)(creating the workshops/training the team)
Project Management and Reports - Always be revamping & what we should have done earlier on (shareable content) (meeting a deadline)
API and loadmodeling.tool - Letting go of control (getting it down when bandwidth is low)( had to figure it out and pease get involved) (sink or swim)
Drawing.tool and Assembly Builder - Planning for the future (Interconnecting)
Embodied carbon - Keeping our finger on the industry pulse (innovation) (follow trends) (pulse)

Part 2 - The Lessons

Lessons I - Building on a existing foundation.

Features: The cove.tool engine, Baseline Energy, and Optimization

Like I mentioned in the introductory text, before I joined covetool there were three already established tools. Far less polished than they are today, they were still instrumental towards establishing the framework for what the web-app would eventually become.

The first feature I became familiar with was a process I called the covetool engine (not actually a feature but an important attribute of the tool). The covetool engine is the three steps taken to set up a project: step 1) add basic project parameters, step 2) add building geometry, and step 3) click continue to trigger the backend automation that establishes and preloads your most basic inputs. With these steps alone you can instantly start evaluating your building's performance, far outpacing how long it would have taken you with the traditional workflow.

The second feature was the Baseline Energy page. The feature was an easy-to-use simplified energy modeling tool which required no-to-minimal changes of the existing baseline inputs in order to run. With what was already present, the tool could run a full diagnostic report of your building and start to highlight areas where the design could be improved.

Last was the optimization tool. The cost versus energy optimization tool is a parametric value-engineering tool. Once you run it, the tool outputs a list of options you can choose from to upgrade your building based in ROI, energy savings, lower carbon, and more. Fun fact, covetool’s namesake comes from this feature: the first letters from cost versus energy are joined to became cove. By offering so much flexibility and instantaneous insight for thousands of combination, the tool could save the design team hundreds of hours preparing and reworking spreadsheets.

Woven into an existing framework, the ideal of utilizing automation to make complex time-intensive tasks helped cove.tool standapart in the competitive landscape. To this day, ingraining automation to all aspects of covetool sharpened my design approach and intentionality. Before I begin any new project, I always ask myself or my team, “Is there any part of this process that can be replaced with automation?” In most cases the answer is an overwhelming YES!

Lesson one is when joining a new product team, spend time to learn from what has already been built. Find the house codes that make the product unique, and reel clients in. For me that was seeing how accessible and automated the tool was, an ethos for any project I work on.

Lessons II - Explain it like I’m 5 (eli5)

Features: The climate report

I joined cove.tool the summer after graduating university. Prior to cove.tool, I would have never been the first person you thought of when asking a question about sustainability or environmental design. Today the opposite is quite true. This all began with the development of cove.tool’s climate report.

My first task as a novice product designer was the development of the Climate Report feature. As I wore multiple hats early in the company's history, I was also generating marketing materials for the launch and educating the sales team on how to talk about the updates. Climate Diagrams, for anyone unfamiliar, are the most basic first steps any designer or consultant can generate to start evaluating their building for potential improvements.

Having everything on track to launch, the only pending task was training the sales team. For some time now, I have been struggling to explain various aspects of the product. Making the situation more tense was that I was also being brought into calls to answer technical questions with industry veterans. Falling back on “fake it, till you make it,” I stood my ground but never gave a convincing portrait of confidence. I studied the source material over and over again, but was more-so regurgitating the definition than actually understanding what they meant. If I wasn’t even comfident in communicating the concepts of our industry, how could I be trusted to build solutions for it.

In a revolutory conversation with a confused salesperson, they finally utter the phrase, “Just explain it to me like I’m five”. That clicked everything into place.

Explain like I’m five (ELI5) is the skill to simplify complex concepts into a coherent-enough explanation so that anyone could grasp them. For me this really manifested itself as understanding the steps of an idea and why that route was taken to reach the conclusion. Applying it to the development of the Climate Report, that means understanding what climate was, what insight did climate data offer to architects, and what would make it easier for an architect to quickly collect useful insight from a climate report. Prior to launching the Climate report, we made a last-minute decision to add help graphics. The help graphic would explain the climate diagrams colors, axis, legends, and highlighted what was most important to leverage for a better building design.

ELI5 forced me to confront my own ignorance around our products, insecurities in building science, and lack of industry experience in general. This transformed the way I learn, write, teach, and develop tools. Up till my last day, I would use the sales team and other non-architect/engineers acquaintances to be my testing ground for how well I understood concepts. They'd also be some of our first beta testers for many features to check the intuitiveness of an interface.

Lessons III - Fitting into an existing workflow

Features: The geometry page and plugins

Architects and Engineers are reluctant to change. They’re overworked, underpaid, on tight deadlines, with tighter budgets, and many of them have already been burned before for sticking out their necks for software solutions like Covetool.

Nearly every design team I ever met with has mentioned the same three things. 1) They absolutely want to do a better job at integrating sustainability into every project. 2) They are worried about how this tool will affect their existing workflow. 3) if Covetool can’t work with their geometry, then the firm would not want to work with Covetool.

Many platforms like cove.tool, had come and gone far before the platform joined the market. Older generations can tell you

Some required entirely new models, others needed specific file types. Our solution was we’ll take any model from anywhere via our platform agnostic plug-in.

Adding anything to their plate would be a detrimental grievance (they’ll probably carry in silence).

Lesson 3, while it’s impossible to propose any change that wouldn’t affect their current workflow, the most strategic strategy you can propose is a method that either reduces redundancies or provides more value as a trade off to added work.

To sell the vision, you had to build the workflow

Lessons IV - Counting easy wins

Features: The Water Use Calculator (little wins still count)

Not every tool requires an mentally-tasking endeavor. Some features come and go with no commotion and we should recognize those as victories. This was the case with the water tool.

In our trajectory to bring together various building simulations into one platform, a water systems tool was an area of building science we had yet tapped into. At the time, no one in our team was familiar with plumbing, irrigation systems, or designing for any other water features. The task was initially delayed because of its foreign tacitness. Finally when researched, the perfect source material.

and can conjure unexpected value

Lesson 4, little wins still count.

Lesson V - Recontextualize the approach

Features: The Façade tools

The next tool to go into development was the facade tool. The facade tool was our primary daylighting feature, before our we had our dream full capabilities daylighting feature (lesson v - 3d analysis). In space of high performance building design, designing for daylight is a crucial factor to consider. If left as an afterthought is could impact the building's energy efficiency, occupants comfort, and your occupant mood and productivity. (Cute study here)

Before having the resources and build the dream daylighting tool, we need a roundabout to offer a thoughtful halfway measure. Adding daylight at this point had become a deal breaker and we needed something.

Fondly nick-named daylight junior, the facade tool proposed an entirely unconventional approach to evaluate daylight. We replicated a research validation used for energy to make a daylight validation workflow. Instead of requiring the whole building, we could make a room and explore daylight from one direction. This was a purely researcher driven, roundabout approach to daylighting analysis.

To this day, I know a couple of firms and architects who extensively use facade tool because of the time it saves.

Lessons VI - Prioritizing needs over wants and defending that decision

Features: 3D analysis tools (choosing a path) (defending a decision)(creating the workshops/train your team)

Feeling confident at this time with that tools we have previously launched,

The 3D analysis was the most ambitious project undertaking in the ealry history of the company.

Lessons VII - always be revamping, what we should have done ealry on

Features: Project Dashbaord (shareable content) (meeting a deadline)

Keep it clean, fresh, and

The feature with the longest journey was the V2 Projects Dashboard.

Lessons VIII - Planning for the future

Features: Drawing tool, assembly builder - mind reading/ the Interconnecting

As the tool got more complex and the features required more connections,

Lesson IX - Letting go of control

Features: APIs and loadmodelig tool (getting it down when bandwidth is low)( had to figure it out and pease get involved) (sink or swim)

The next stage in growing the product was letting go of part of the control. For me this was observed in two ways. First, in the last year or two there is an untuck in firms who have their own internal reporting dashboard. For these firms, they still liked the Covetool platform but really need their data to live outside of the web app. Second, more detailed tools needed to be built and it needed a profession with miles more experience and know-how any one on the current team could offer.

Letting go meant finding ways our data could exist independently from its origin and that new folks were going to come in and take over responsibility.

Our users we’re loving Covetool but they were also looking to grow to meet their own needs. Many firms at the time had their own visions for it. Internal reporting databases were on a upward trend for Architects and engineers commuted to meeting sustainability targets. L

Lesson X - Keeping our finger on the industry pulse

Features: Embodied carbon feature (innovation) (follow trends) (pulse)

With many successful

Bonus Lesson XI - Cross functional collaboration and taking on the leadership mantle

Features: All of them

(deadline, cs with user issues, and hot issues,(training a team)

With my time at covetool over, I fondly look back at all the teams I collaborated with. In many cases, myself and the other OGs (original group-members) founded the departments, put-in-place the first workflows, and 10x all the teams. The times I’ll remember most will be byfar the

the lessons I learned while designing with and leading an award winning product team for the last 4 ½ years.

Shared, downloadable, and promotable

Encourage fomo

Part 2 - The Lessons

I am excited.

Disclaimer

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the lessons learned during my time at Covetool. I have no intention to share any information considered confidential about the company, its clients, its finances, the software, unreleased plans, or any other details that are protected under the organization's proprietary information policy. This is coalesce my growth over the years into a shareable post for potential employers, collegues and other interested parties.

By Marco A. Aguirre

Published May 4, 2022.

Cite: Aguirre, Marco A. “The Business Case for Using Automated Building Performance Analysis In the Design Process.” Web log. Cove.tool Resources (blog). Cove Tool, Inc., May 4, 2022. https://info.cove.tools/e-book-the-business-case-for-using-automated-building-performance-analysis-in-the-design-process.