Rethinking water management for Indian condominiums
How research with facility managers shaped Planet SIM, a dedicated product for monitoring tanks, tanker deliveries, leaks and water consumption.
Challenge
Understand how Indian condominiums managed water supply, quality, maintenance and costs, and identify where digital tools could reduce fragmented, manual work.
Approach
I interviewed facility managers and committee members, mapped their operational processes and translated the findings into an early prototype. I then used it as a co-design tool to gather feedback and refine the product direction together with stakeholders.
Outcome
The research defined the foundation for Planet SIM, a dedicated product helping facility managers monitor water infrastructure, track tank levels and tanker deliveries, and identify problems earlier.
Overview
As Planet Smart City expanded into India, we needed to understand whether its existing digital services could respond to the realities of local condominiums.
Early conversations suggested that facility managers and committee members were dealing with a level of operational complexity that was not as prominent in Italy or Brazil. Water management emerged as one of the most urgent examples.
The challenge was not simply monitoring consumption. It was coordinating water supply, tanker deliveries, quality checks, tank cleaning, maintenance and costs across fragmented processes.
Timeline
Process
Discovery research
Interviewing facility managers and committee members to understand condominium operations.
Insight synthesis
Mapping recurring problems across water supply, quality, maintenance and costs.
Early prototype
Turning research findings into a tangible service concept.
Stakeholder co-design
Reviewing workflows and priorities together with facility managers.
Product direction
Refining the concept and defining the foundation for Planet SIM.
Starting with the people managing the system
I conducted qualitative research with 40 participants from condominiums ranging from approximately 30 to 720 homes.
The participants included treasurers, secretaries, committee members, society managers and a facility-management agency. This gave us different perspectives on how decisions were made and how daily operations were managed.
The research explored six connected areas: staff, facilities, budgets, documentation, communication and the adoption of new services.
Most participants reported that their condominiums purchased around 40–60% of their water because the government supply was insufficient.
Water was managed through people, not data
Water came from multiple vendors, but there was no reliable way to compare its quality or trace a problem back to a particular supplier. Tank levels were checked manually, cleaning was coordinated with external providers and maintenance depended on staff remembering when each action was due.
Planning was largely reactive. Facility managers often discovered problems only after residents complained.
“It is hard to plan when to refill, clean tanks and do system checks.”
The wider system explained the problem
Water was part of a broader operational pattern.
Information was distributed across spreadsheets, reports, emails and WhatsApp conversations. Each condominium followed its own procedures, while responsibility was divided between committee members, society managers, agencies and specialised staff.
Even when smart meters were available, the information was not always accessible in real time. Technology had been added, but visibility had not improved.
This made it difficult to answer basic questions:
How much water is currently available?
When should the tanks be refilled or cleaned?
Which supplier delivered poor-quality water?
Why did costs increase when consumption appeared unchanged?
Has a leak or infrastructure problem gone unnoticed
From isolated tasks to one service
The research reframed the opportunity.
Instead of treating tank monitoring, tanker deliveries, maintenance and reporting as separate features, we began to see them as parts of one continuous water-management journey.
Condominium teams needed a shared view of what was happening, what required attention and what had already been completed. The service also had to reduce manual work rather than introduce another system for staff to maintain.
Process map
The research revealed two distinct operational contexts.
Larger condominiums had specialised facility managers, more infrastructure and greater budgets. Many were already exploring automation, but struggled with disconnected systems and manual reporting.
Smaller condominiums often had no dedicated facility manager. Committee members coordinated suppliers and maintenance themselves, making affordability and ease of use particularly important.
This suggested a focused initial opportunity among medium and large condominiums, where operational complexity and readiness for automation were both higher.
Condominium teams needed a shared view of what was happening, what required attention and what had already been completed. The service also had to reduce manual work rather than introduce another system for staff to maintain.
Prototype
With the initial target defined, I translated the research into an early prototype for facility managers. It brought together what was happening, what required attention and what had already been completed in one shared view. The prototype was not intended as a final solution. It became a tool for gathering feedback and co-designing the service with facility teams.
Testing the prototype through real scenarios
Facility managers were given realistic situations and asked to complete tasks using the prototype, such as recording a tanker arrival, setting a reminder and checking consumption data.
After each task, they shared what was unclear, what information was missing and what they would need to complete the same activity in real life. Their feedback guided the next prototype iterations.
What the testing revealed
Facility managers saw value in having tank levels, tanker arrivals, alerts and completed actions in one place. It reduced the need to reconstruct the system’s status from calls, messages and manual records.
The sessions also showed that alerts needed to explain what required attention, who was responsible and what should happen next. These findings helped simplify the workflows and prioritise the most useful features for the next prototype.
Outcomes
This research represented the starting point rather than the final state of the product. Planet SIM continued to evolve significantly over the following years, but the initial research validated the need for a dedicated water-management solution and shaped its first product direction.
The current results show how that early hypothesis developed into a product used in real condominium operations.
households' water managed
less water consumption
lower utility spending
less time spent managing tanker procurement
Planet SIM
Learning
Expanding into infrastructure-led services
The project deepened my experience in designing beyond the interface, connecting physical water infrastructure, sensor data, operational workflows and the people responsible for acting on it.
Treating operational capacity as a design constraint
I learned to evaluate not only what users needed, but also what each condominium could realistically adopt and maintain. The same solution could not serve a specialised facility team and a volunteer committee equally well.
Designing a foundation that could evolve
The research shaped the product’s initial direction without over-defining its future. It reinforced the importance of establishing clear principles and priorities while leaving space for the product to change as technology, usage and market knowledge developed.
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