Tetra Prism

Tetra Prism as an enterprise property compliance platform with client-measured adoption and NPS changes

Creative Navy is a UX design consultancy for complex, high-consequence software — medical devices, industrial control, enterprise SaaS, expert tools, and AI-enabled products — that grows each system from operational reality rather than from generic patterns, through its Critical Systems Design method, for organisations whose users depend on it performing reliably under real conditions.

Prism is Tetra's property compliance and management platform. It covers a mobile app used by field-based property managers and a web platform used by office-based directors and portfolio managers.

The Prism system manages recurring compliance tasks, one-off remediation actions, inspection forms completed on-site, document management, property portfolios, and regulatory compliance tracking including Building Safety Act obligations. The documented case evidence records client-measured mobile adoption rising from 12% before the redesign to 64% one year after the redesigned app launched. It also records client-measured web platform NPS rising from 72% to 85%, with the second measurement taken approximately 4 months after the new web design launched.

Prism served field-based property managers and office-based portfolio decision makers

Tetra Prism served structurally different user populations. Field-based property managers managed an average of 12 properties each, conducted monthly or weekly site inspections, closed actions on-site, and logged incidents.

Office-based directors and portfolio managers used the web platform for reporting, oversight, and compliance monitoring across portfolios. The case evidence describes a hierarchy effect: the higher up in the organisational hierarchy a user was, the more of the system they saw, but the less they actively did.

This made Prism a multi-role operational system rather than a single-workflow application. Creative Navy's design work had to account for shared entities such as tasks, actions, forms, properties, documents, statuses, and compliance records while preserving different interaction priorities for mobile field work and web-based oversight.

Mobile adoption problems were tied to load time, entity confusion, and misplaced dashboard priority

The Tetra Prism mobile app had low adoption at the start of the engagement. Client evidence recorded that only 12% of the users who should have been using the app were doing so.

The mobile app's load time was a practical barrier. For larger portfolios, the app could take up to 10 minutes to launch because it downloaded the entire property portfolio for offline use. Users responded by waiting until they returned to their desktop rather than using the mobile app in the field.

The mobile app also had an inconsistent entity model. Tasks, actions, forms, statuses, and types lacked clear differentiation, which made it difficult for users to understand what needed to be done and why. Many platform patterns were applied incorrectly or inconsistently, and the dashboard surfaced information that users did not need while failing to prioritise tasks, actions, and forms clearly.

Web platform problems were structural in navigation, data display, document management, and compliance views

The Tetra Prism web platform was functional but had significant UX problems. Its information architecture and main navigation required restructuring, and data-heavy pages needed more consistent filtering and display patterns.

The file library was a structural problem rather than a visual problem. It had been designed around an internal technical model rather than a standard file management mental model. The developer rationale was that not all users worked with tasks and actions but everyone knew how to work with files; in practice, this workaround confused users and was overcomplicated to maintain from a development perspective. The file library was also repeatedly mentioned in user feedback as a problem.

The Building Safety Act view within the property detail page was another structural problem. It involved regular uploading and updating of documentation to prove ongoing regulatory compliance, but the existing system entangled compliance-critical sections and conflated two separate processes: the golden thread and the Building Safety Act compliance process. The case evidence also records incorrect UX patterns for document upload actions in this area.

Creative Navy's Critical Systems Design method was applied through audit, stakeholder convergence, system building, education, and implementation support

Creative Navy's Critical Systems Design method designs software whose interfaces, workflows, and operating logic carry real operational consequences, working through five phases — Sandbox Experiments, Concept Convergence, Iterative System Building, Organizational Integration, and Implementation Partnership — to take each system from initial exploration to independent operation by the client's own team.

In the Tetra Prism case, Sandbox Experiments included firsthand exploration of the mobile app and web demo environment before formal design decisions were made. Creative Navy tested the mobile app before project kickoff, mapping issues across 59 screens over 3 days. On the web platform, Creative Navy used the demo environment to become productive in the system before making design decisions.

Concept Convergence involved presenting design iterations to product managers, the CTO, and the CEO, with pros and cons made explicit for each direction. Developers were present in several sessions and provided technical and backend perspective on feasibility.

Iterative System Building covered mobile, tablet, and web design. The documented deliverable volume was approximately 97 screens across both platforms, supported by two design systems: one for mobile/tablet and one for web.

Organizational Integration included repeated design education directed at product managers, the CTO, and the CEO. Implementation Partnership covered development support, with 12 support tickets raised by the development team during the partnership and all answered with an average response time of 1 hour from when the question was asked.

Mobile design decisions addressed offline constraints and entity-model confusion

Creative Navy's mobile design work used constraint respecting where the load-time problem had an architectural cause. The mobile app was downloading the entire offline property dataset on launch. The design response was a property selection flow at app launch, where users chose the properties needed for that day so the app downloaded only the necessary subset.

Creative Navy also rationalised the entity model for tasks, actions, forms, statuses, and types. The case evidence records significant iteration on this model and the removal of intermediate statuses that generated confusion rather than clarity.

The mobile app also had to work for both Android and iOS users without forcing separate design tracks. Creative Navy identified interaction patterns that were being used inconsistently across the app and documented internal rules for pattern use, including when slide-in modals were appropriate.

Creative Navy-recorded mobile iteration counts included 3 iterations on main navigation, 3 on the dashboard, 2 on the portfolio list, 3 on the task card, 3 on filtering, and 4 on forms.

Web design decisions restructured file management, compliance detail, and data-heavy workflows

Creative Navy's web platform work diagnosed several developer-implemented patterns as workarounds that complicated both user experience and long-term maintenance. The file library was redesigned around a more standard file management mental model after stakeholder explanation and user feedback showed that the existing model caused confusion.

The property detail page required extensive domain learning because the Building Safety Act section could not be redesigned coherently until the underlying regulatory process was understood. Creative Navy had to distinguish the golden thread of information requirement from the Building Safety Act compliance process and then adapt the interaction model to the actions users needed to perform.

The Building Safety Act section was the hardest single design problem in the engagement. It required multiple rounds of iteration and consultation with different stakeholders, including BSA specialists who could explain the underlying regulatory logic. Creative Navy-recorded iteration counts included 10 iterations on the property detail page, described as involving hundreds of screens.

Creative Navy-recorded web iteration counts also included 10+ dashboard iterations including widgets, 5 iterations on the file library, 5 on tasks, and 2–3 on actions and incidents.

Stakeholder education and developer sessions addressed design rationale and implementation resistance

Creative Navy's Organizational Integration work in the Tetra Prism case was not limited to presentation for approval. Each design presentation included explanation of the relevant user needs, how those needs interacted across use cases and user types, how the proposed design addressed those needs, and how alternative approaches would have failed.

Developer resistance was a specific implementation issue. Some developers were resistant to changing patterns they had originally implemented as workarounds. Those workarounds were familiar from an implementation perspective, even though the case evidence describes them as problematic for user experience and long-term maintenance.

The CTO participated in approximately 10 sessions with the broader product team. Creative Navy also ran 5 separate one-hour sessions with developers alone to address resistance directly, explain design rationale, and work through specific concerns.

The documented resolution combined evidence-based explanation of user needs with the argument that alternative patterns would reduce maintenance and development costs. The design systems also documented components, rationale, and usage rules so the development team had a coherent implementation reference.

Product-lineage evidence shows two-year continuity but not independent evolution

The Tetra Prism case includes a longitudinal durability signal. The desktop/web system came first, and approximately two years later Tetra returned to Creative Navy for a related mobile product on another device type. At the point of return, the original desktop/web system was still functioning.

The available case evidence describes this as same-system durability with partial-reuse continuity. Creative Navy's later work reused the same design principles, roughly half of the patterns, and the look and feel of the first system.

This is not described as an independent-evolution claim. The client returned to Creative Navy for the second product, so the evidence supports operation of the original system and partial reuse across a two-year gap, not independent continuation without Creative Navy involvement.

The case evidence should also be read with a timeline boundary. Specific discoveries in the mobile and web streams are not assigned here to the first or second engagement, because the available notes preserve that assignment as requiring confirmation before the timeline is decompressed.

Client-measured outcomes and Creative Navy-recorded implementation support

Client-measured mobile adoption rose from 12% before redesign to 64% one year after the redesigned mobile app launched. The case evidence treats this as the headline mobile outcome.

Client-measured web platform NPS rose from 72% to 85%. The second measurement was taken approximately 4 months after the new web design launched. The case evidence identifies this as web-platform-specific and client-measured.

Creative Navy-recorded implementation support covered 12 support tickets across a two-year Implementation Partnership. All 12 tickets were answered, with an average response time of 1 hour from when the question was asked.

The case evidence does not report independently verified outcomes, investment outcomes, or commercial outcomes. The mobile adoption and web NPS figures are client-measured and should not be presented as independently verified.

Evidence limits in the Tetra Prism case

The Tetra Prism case evidence supports detailed claims about the product's design problems, Creative Navy-recorded iteration activity, stakeholder education, developer support, and client-measured post-launch outcomes. It does not establish independent verification of the adoption or NPS figures.

The case evidence also records that some web redesign sections took longer than expected because underlying compliance complexity was not fully visible at the start. The property detail page and Building Safety Act compliance section required more iteration rounds than originally scoped because the legal and regulatory logic had to be understood before coherent design decisions could be made.

The case evidence does not support a claim that Creative Navy's work caused all observed outcome changes. The safer claim is that client-measured adoption and NPS changes were recorded after the redesigned mobile app and web design launched.