Case study
Exacq
Exacq: Making Forensic Search discoverable and intuitive so users know it exists.
Exacq (ExacqVision), a flagship Johnson Controls product used by 1M+ users, is an enterprise video surveillance management system. Its Forensic Search feature helps teams quickly find relevant events — shoplifting, theft, intrusion — by filtering on duration and objects instead of scrubbing through hours of footage. I led the strategic research and re-design, turning a buried power feature into a highly discoverable, intuitive workflow.
Problem discovery
Only ~2% of current Exacq users were leveraging Forensic Search — a low adoption rate despite its potential value. The search flow didn’t match the mental model of how operators actually investigate incidents. Forensic Search was technically “there” but functionally invisible in the day-to-day workflow, with accumulated usability issues since its 2013 launch (solely designed and developed by engineers).
The entry point was a tiny “Show Filters” checkbox — an undiscoverable, unintuitive interface with no context.
Primary research insights
- 01 — Steep learning curve. Users don’t know what to do next, leading to extra steps, confusion, and significantly longer search times. (Source: UX Audit)
- 02 — Unaware of the features altogether. Poor discoverability means users are unaware of object filtering, camera selection, and the different search modes. (Source: Stakeholder Interviews)
- 03 — Rising expectations. The market is competitive and user expectations are shifting toward faster, more efficient, intuitive experiences. (Source: Competitor Analysis)
Constraints & limitations
- UI constraints — ExacqVision lived in a legacy, developer-designed UI that couldn’t be overhauled.
- Technical constraints — Exacq isn’t cloud-based, which limited some modern patterns and advanced features users expected.
- Limited user access — to avoid raising expectations for an unlaunched feature, we had no direct access to many users.
Design strategy
Research showed the current flow didn’t match users’ mental models, but fully re-architecting wasn’t feasible short-term given engineering constraints. So I took a phased approach: address high-impact UX issues immediately (entry point, filters, key steps) while outlining a longer-term path to realign the end-to-end workflow with how users actually search.
Phase 1 — immediate UX fixes
Filter panel — designing for discovery. The filters’ entry point wasn’t intuitive and users didn’t notice it. The goal was to make filters feel naturally integrated — a step that leads to better results, not extra effort.
My ‘aha’ moment: “If filters drive search quality, why hide them behind a click or toggle?”
Rethinking button priority — clarity over clutter. All buttons were treated with equal priority, overloading the interface. I introduced a clearer CTA (“Search” instead of “Apply filters”), moved delete to an icon-level action when a saved filter is selected, and removed redundant controls.
Designing for dense timelines — less friction, more focus. Scrubbing through dense timelines with multiple feeds was exhausting. I let users hide secondary feeds and analytics, and collapse analytics per camera, to cut visual noise and stay on a single view.
Camera panel — small gaps, big friction. A straightforward panel on the surface, but UX gaps added extra clicks. I added an analytics icon hinting at advanced capabilities, grey-out + ‘no video’ on hover, consistent sorting, and AI location-based camera clustering.
User’s frustration: “It’s tiring to hunt through every possible camera whenever an incident occurs.”
Phase 2 — long-term vision
Re-design the search workflow to match the user’s mental model — When did it happen? (search range) → Who / What am I looking for? (object/event + filters) → Where did it happen? (cameras) → View results — layering in AI-driven assistance (smart suggestions, dynamic filters) and a simplified result layout for effortless scanning.
Impact
- 01 — Resolved 11+ usability gaps within the search workflow, making search intuitive and features discoverable.
- 02 — Reduced search time from 15 to 6 minutes (60% reduction) by eliminating friction and confusion.
- 03 — Strong stakeholder alignment with the product vision across PM, UX, Sales, and technical executives.
How I grew as a designer
- Systems thinking — a steep, layered product pushed me to document patterns and build a clear mental model of the whole system.
- Designing with awareness — understanding how small tweaks quietly break other workflows taught me to map dependencies, stress-test edge cases, and treat every change as part of a larger system.
- Stakeholder management & collaboration — holding different perspectives together and framing decisions in each stakeholder’s language made me a more resilient, adaptable collaborator.