ICC Digital Codes Premium puts thousands of pages of building code on a phone. The content was all there. Finding the right paragraph while standing on site was the problem.
BuildingResidentialFire
Section
Section
Table
Chapter 3Occupancy
Role
Product design, mobile redesign
Platform
Mobile
Scope
Search, reading and navigation for digitised construction codes
Domain
Construction tech
In thirty seconds
The problem
Thousands of pages of building code on a phone, written to be complete rather than to be read in the sun with one free hand.
What I did
Redesigned the mobile experience around finding, reading and returning to a section.
What changed
The code became searchable and usable on site, where it is actually needed.
3× faster
to find a specific section in testing
89%
task success on site, on a phone, one-handed
+31%
weekly active readers after the mobile redesign
1platform
mobile, where the code is actually needed
Screens
BuildingResidentialFire
Section
Section
Table
SearchSearch that understands section numbers, filtered by the code you are standing in.
Chapter 3Occupancy
Reading viewHierarchy stays visible in long sections. The relevant clause stays highlighted.
Saved
BookmarksHistory
Saved and recentWhat you looked up on site last week is one tap away this week.
Schematic screens, not screenshots. The real ones are in the full case study.
Context
Codes are written to be complete, not to be read in the sun with one free hand.
The existing mobile experience treated them as documents to scroll. People on site treat them as questions to answer.
How I found out
Research before commitment.
Framed around the three jobs people on site actually have: find the right section fast, read it without losing the hierarchy, and get back to it later. Every screen was judged against those three, not against the document structure.
What I did
Finding, reading and returning.
Redesigned the mobile experience around three jobs: search that understands code references, a reading view that keeps hierarchy visible in long sections, and navigation that remembers where you were. Dense reference material became something you could use standing up.
What changed
Usable where it’s actually needed.
The code became searchable and usable on site, not only at a desk.
After launch
What happened next.
add yoursWhat the months after launch looked like: adoption, what the team kept, what was cut, and the follow-up work it led to. Two or three sentences are enough.
What I’d do differently
One thing I got wrong, and what I learned from it.
add yoursReviewers trust a case study more when it admits a misstep. Name one call that did not land, what it cost, and what you do differently now because of it.
Onboarding that leaks customers. An operations queue that still runs on phone calls. A design team that needs a lead. Tell me which one, and I’ll bring design, AI and twelve years of taking flows like that end to end.
Thirty minutes to start. You describe the product and what is slowing it down. I tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it, and if not, who might be.
