TCS Connected Workforce Safety Solution

Overview

When COVID-19 disrupted industries worldwide, factories and manufacturing plants faced a challenge that office environments largely avoided:

Our team explored how Industrial IoT (IIoT) and workplace intelligence could help organizations monitor safety protocols at scale and intervene before incidents became operational disruptions.

Challenge

During the pandemic, manufacturing facilities faced unprecedented challenges in ensuring worker safety while maintaining operational continuity.

73%

Factories reported safety monitoring gaps

2.5 hours

Average daily time spent on manual checks

450+

Workers per facility requiring monitoring

Why this was happening

01

Fragmented systems

Temperature checks, PPE compliance and distancing were tracked separately, creating data silos and inefficiences.

02

Manual & Error-Prone

Paper logs and manual checks resulted in inconsistent enforcement and delayed response to safety violations.

03

No real-time visibility

Management lacked a unified view of safety metrics across multiple facilities, hindering proactive decision-making.

Insight

Problem wasn't collecting data. It was knowing where to look, what needed attention, and how quickly teams could respond.

Approach

Reframing the problem

The initial brief focused on tracking safety violations. Through working sessions with the product manager and reviewing real use-cases, it became clear that the bigger opportunity wasn't documenting incidents; it was preventing them before they happened.

Track COVID incidents as they happen

Initial problem statement

Detect and contain COVID risks early to prevent disruption.

Recalibrated goal

The valuable question isn't who caused a violation; it's where risk is rising, and how to contain exposure.

Understanding the environment

The understanding of environment in which people responsible for tracking & reporting incidences were working came through product use cases and collaborative working sessions with the product manager, rather than primary field research. Through these sessions we learned:

Desk research insights

Manual monitoring

Safety teams physically walked production areas to identify violations and check complaince. By the time something was caught, exposure had often already occured.

Location-tied incidents

Safety events were inherently tied to physical spaces - entry gates, production floors, warehouses, and utility zones. Where an incident occured was often the starting point for investigation.

Limited time

Safety officers balanced production targets, staffing shortages, and operational continuity. The interface needed to surface the right information quickly, without adding unecessary complexity.

Visibility, not surveillance

The goal was to improve awareness of workplace risk, not monitor individual employess. The experience helps organisations identify patterns and respond proactively while respecting worker privacy.

Understanding the primary user

Rather than designing for individual workers, the platform needs to be designed for the people responsible for monitoring safety across an entire facility. Defining the primary user helped prioritize information, workflows, and decision-making throughout the experience.

User Archetype

Plant Safety Manager

Monitors workplace safety across one or more facilities to identify risks, respond to incidents, and maintain compliance. Relies on real-time visibility, prioritized alerts, and operational insights to keep workers safe while minimizing operational disruption.

Mapping the core workflow

Before organizing the product, I and other designers on the team mapped the primary operational workflow to understand the information users needed at each stage of responding to a safety event.

Structuring the information architecture

With these principles established, we organized the platform before designing individual screens. The initial requirements arrived as disconnected feature lists, so we translated them into a unified information architecture.

I grouped related capabilities around user intent, established a clear hierarchy and separated monitoring, configuration, reporting, and support into distinct navigation areas.

This became the foundation for the navigation model, user flows, and individual screen designs.

Solution

Experience concepts

Before moving into high-fidelity design, I explored the core workflows through an interactive mid-fidelity prototype. This helped validate navigation, information hierarchy, and task flows with stakeholders before investing in visual refinement.

Explore the experience (mid-fidelity prototype)

The prototype brings together the key workflows of the Connected Workforce Safety Solution - from monitoring live safety events to investigating incidents and configuring the platform.

Experience highlights

The solution focuses on the most critical interactions designed to help safety teams identify risks, investigate incidents, and keep operations running safely.

Monitor workplace safety — Designed to surface live safety incidents, compliance status, and operational context at a glance.

Behind the experience: IIoT sensors, cameras, and connected devices continuously feed the platform, enabling real-time monitoring, automated rule evaluation, and operational alerts.

Outcomes

What the experience was designed to enable

The design focused on helping safety teams move from reactive incident reporting to proactive risk management by making critical information easier to detect, investigate, and act on.

Proactive monitoring

Shift from reactive reporting to proactive monitoring.

Faster investigation

Navigate from enterprise-wide trends to individual incidents in just a few interactions.

Reduced manual effort

Minimize dependence on physical floor inspections.

Operational awareness

Improve visibility into workplace safety through real-time monitoring.

Product adoption at scale

~180k

employees monitored daily across 19 Indian cities, on rolling 7/14/21-day risk windows

~4 weeks

to jumpstart a return-to-work program, per TCS

1000s

of employees a single deployment can scale to across locations

**The following metrics are published by TCS.

Lessons

Working from use cases rather than my own field research was a real constraint, it meant staying close to the PM's framing of what teams actually needed to decide, rather than metrics for their own sake.

Beyond metrics and business outcomes, this project reminded me why design matters. We weren't just building software - we were creating systems that protect human lives. Every alert that prevented an exposure, every violation caught before it escalated, represented a real person kept safe. That responsibility shaped every design decision and will influence how I approach enterprise UX for years to come.