Calibrator

Background

Calibrator is a database tool categorizing all cost data of Google’s built projects (the data is still being input from a variety of disparate sources). This feature allowed for direct cost-comparison at a very granular level. Previously projects could only be compared across higher levels of data, but users requested a more fine-grained ability to really get in the weeds.

Challenges of Construction Cost Coding

The cost data for construction projects is organized into a series of buckets. Google uses a proprietary system that does not categorize the lowest level items uniformly. This means that users need to compare cost items that may not have a one-to-one relationship. Additionally, at the individual cost item level, users are interested in not just the overall cost of an item but also the cost per unit, and how much each unit costs.

Selecting projects

The first step in a comparison across projects is to help a user select the right project. The list of projects is long, and names of projects are not always helpful in deciphering which one is which. A robust project search feature was de-prioritized for the launch of this feature, so instead I designed a project detail card that allowed a user to see relevant data about the selection that they made.

Comparison Table

The comparison table is relatively straightforward, with the exception of the lowest level items. A card allows for more data to be displayed for each items, without becoming too dense. Users are able to expand and contract categories as well as filter data to find the relevant information.