Treebula Forest Monitoring
2025 · Product · Mobile · AI/Satellite
Designing a mobile-first service that helps forest owners monitor their property remotely using AI and satellite data.
Distance creates worry
Many forest owners live far from their property. They worry about storm damage, bark beetle attacks, and other risks but have no easy way to monitor what's happening.
Traditional solutions require physical visits or expensive consultants. By the time damage is discovered, it's often too late. Forest owners needed a way to stay informed without constant travel.
The challenge: How might we help forest owners feel secure and informed about their property, even from a distance, without overwhelming them with technical complexity?
Designing for forest owners
Private forest owners
Age group: 55–80 years
Our target group is often engaged but not always technically savvy. This made clarity, simplicity, and accessibility crucial in every design decision.
Building on internal expertise
Unlike traditional UX projects with formal user interviews, we built this service on internal expertise and long industry experience. Many of our stakeholders and team members are forest owners themselves.
Through structured workshops, ongoing discussions, and joint decisions, I gained deep knowledge of the target group's needs, daily life, and challenges. This made it possible to quickly test ideas, iterate, and ensure every function created real value.
Key Insights
- •Distance creates worry – Forest owners feel powerless when they don't know what's happening on their property
- •Time-critical information – Damage is often discovered too late. Real-time updates are essential
- •Need for simplicity – The target group is older and not technically savvy. The interface must be clear and safe
- •Local and relevant data – Users want specific information about their own property, not general forestry data
Balancing modern innovation with accessibility
The biggest challenge was designing for users aged 55–80 while maintaining Treebula's identity as a modern, innovative tech company.
Simple & Clear
Minimal technical competence required
Accessible
WCAG guidelines and clear contrasts
Modern
Clean aesthetics signaling innovation
Mobile-First
Optimized for on-the-go access
Focused
Minimal choices to reduce cognitive load
Contextual
Property-specific, relevant data
What we built
Forest Monitoring combines AI and satellite data to give forest owners real-time insights about their property, all accessible from their mobile phone.
🌲Property Overview
Dashboard showing forest status, recent events, and risk indicators at a glance
⚠️Risk Alerts
Real-time notifications about storm damage, bark beetle risks, and other threats
🌪️Wind Analysis
Interactive wind rose showing wind patterns specific to the property
🌤️Weather Forecast
Local weather data tied directly to the forest location
From idea to product
My role was to transform ideas and insights from the team into a working, visual, and user-friendly product. It was far from linear, more like a roller coaster of rapid iterations and new insights.
Since we were building something that didn't exist on the market before, flexibility and close collaboration were essential throughout the process.
📐Wireframes
Quick wireframes to visualize the product's basic structure and flow
🎨Prototypes
Interactive prototypes in Figma to test interactions and flows
🔄Iterations
Continuous testing and adjustments with stakeholders
Designing for the target group
With users aged 55–80, clarity and simplicity were non-negotiable. Every design decision focused on:
- •Clear visual hierarchies that guide the eye
- •Easy-to-read typography with proper sizing
- •High contrast colors for better readability
- •Icons and components with clear, obvious functions
- •Minimal choices per screen to reduce cognitive load
Close collaboration was key
This project showed me the power of tight collaboration between design, development, and business.
🤝Cross-functional teamwork
Working closely with developers and product owners meant I could test ideas in real-time and make quick adjustments during development.
Showing wireframes and prototypes early created tight feedback loops that shaped the service's functionality.
⚡Rapid iteration
Creating something new in a conservative industry required courage to test, throw away, and start over.
These rapid iterations shaped much of the service's functionality and user experience.
Bringing forest monitoring to mobile
The launch of Forest Monitoring marks a major step forward for Treebula and for forest owners in Sweden.
The service makes it possible to monitor and gain insights about your forest in a completely new way, directly from your mobile phone. By combining AI and satellite data with an accessible interface, we created a solution that feels both modern and easy to use, even for a technically inexperienced target group.
"This project proved how close collaboration between design, development, and business can create products that strengthen the brand and meet real needs in a traditionally analog industry."
What I learned
This project has been one of the most educational experiences in my design journey. From a fuzzy idea to a finished product, I learned the value of experimentation, rapid iteration, and trusting the process.
Research isn't always traditional
User research doesn't always follow a textbook pattern. In this case, the strongest insights came from internal expertise deeply rooted in the target group's reality.
Balance function and aesthetics
Designing for an older, less tech-savvy audience without compromising modern feel deepened my understanding of how design can unite usability and innovation.
Collaboration drives success
When design, technology, and business goals work together, you can create products that not only work but actually make a difference.
What's next
Now that Forest Monitoring is live, the real learning begins. Gathering feedback from actual users will help us:
- →
Test with real forest owners
Validate the interface with the 55–80 age group and identify usability issues
- →
Refine based on feedback
Prioritize improvements and new features based on actual user behavior
- →
Expand functionality
Explore additional features that provide value without adding complexity
Thanks for reading! 🙌
I hope you enjoyed learning about Treebula.
Feel free to explore more of my work or get in touch.