Case study · 2025–2026

A 28-section EU standard, turned into a guided flow

I designed the experience in 2025 and built the app in 2026 as its technical lead.

atlas+

atlasplus.it ↗

The sustainability report for small and medium businesses. They enter the data with a step-by-step guide, a team checks it and designs the report on their brand.

Role
Product design and technical lead (CTO role)
My part
Research, UX/UI, design system, full-stack build
Team
Crowd Plus team: founder, VSME content, report layout
Timeline
May 2025 to today
Platform
Web app
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Next.js, Supabase, Claude Code

Problem

SMEs are asked for a sustainability report, and the EU standard behind it is dense.

Decision

Ask what people know, calculate the rest, one block at a time.

What shipped

A web app with 15 VSME modules, live since June 2026.

What changed

The first client completed all 15 modules in about a week.

What I take with me

Design for whoever runs the report, not only for whoever fills it in, and look for the common thread in what clients ask.

01

The product, first

One question per page, with everything a person needs right next to it.

  1. 1Last year, right thereNobody starts from a blank page.
  2. 2Units people knowCubic meters and liters, as they appear on the bill.
  3. 3The app does the mathsAtlas+ converts every value to tonnes of CO₂ while you type.
Home. What's in progress, what's assigned to you, what's done.
Dashboard. Every block with its progress and who is working on it.
Summary. Check everything before confirming the block.

02

Why SMEs struggle

VSME is the voluntary sustainability standard for unlisted SMEs (EFRAG, December 2024), recommended by the European Commission in July 2025. Banks, clients and tenders increasingly ask for it, and the person filling it in is usually the finance manager or the owner.

28

sections and hundreds of fields in the standard

3 · 15

areas and blocks in Atlas+

DifficultTiringEndless

03

What I listened for

Ten years of fitting hearing aids taught me to listen for what people can't say. Here it was a feeling: attention drops exactly when the effort goes up.

  • Inexperienced
  • Approximate
  • Expert
positivenegativewhat you'll needcalculated for youhand it to a colleaguedata I didn't expect · new data to producestartdone

Redrawn from the emotional journey in the 2025 research: dashed before, solid after.

04

From chaos to a map

I started with no knowledge of the subject and collected every field of the standard, about a hundred, each with its type and its dependencies. Then I sorted them: what the person types, what the app calculates, and which area it belongs to.

EnvironmentSocialGovernanceDiesel (m³)Natural gas (m³)LPG (L)Electricity (MWh)Energy supplierScope 1 · t CO₂Scope 2 · t CO₂Water (m³)Hazardous waste (t)Radioactive waste?CO₂ per €EmployeesTraining hoursInjury rate% on national contractDiversity indexLegal structureIndividual or consolidatedData protectionCertificationsTargets
typed by the personcalculated by the app

From the UX guidelines (excerpt)

  • Group questions into areas that make sense to the person filling them in.
  • Break the work into micro-tasks and leave room for pauses.
  • Put the hardest and the mandatory parts first.
  • Open every section with what it is and what you'll need.
  • Validate, convert or pre-fill data whenever possible.
  • Show progress all the time and end with a summary.
  • Let people hand a section to a colleague.

05 · Decision

Slides, dashboard, or both

Three ways to walk through 15 blocks. An early design used slides with a stepper on top. The final one keeps the step-by-step focus and adds a map of the whole report on the side.

SlidesFocused, but you lose sight of the whole.
DashboardEverything at a glance, heavy at the start.
HybridchosenEvery block and its status on the side, one step at a time on the right.
Insight
Attention drops while effort grows: people need to see where they are and how much is left.
Options
Slides, dashboard and hybrid, compared on the same wireframes.
Choice
Hybrid: a sidebar by area with statuses and sub-steps.
Trade-off
Harder logic: pages in a block share data, so blocks had to follow the data, each one self-contained. In return every block has an intro and a summary, and people always know what's next.

06 · Decision

Ask what people know, calculate the rest

The standard speaks the language of auditors: Scope 1, Scope 2, intensity ratios. The people filling it in know their bills. So every question asks for a number they can find, in the unit they see on paper, and Atlas+ does the conversion.

The standard asks: Scope 1 emissions from stationary combustion (t CO₂e)

Atlas+ asks: How much fuel did your boilers and generators use this year?

The standard asks: Scope 2 emissions, market-based (t CO₂e)

Atlas+ asks: Who is your electricity supplier, and how many MWh did you buy?

The standard asks: GHG intensity per net revenue

Atlas+ asks: What was your revenue this year? Atlas+ does the division.

  • Every value is asked once and feeds the calculations on the next pages.
  • 122 calculations, 110 of them with the source of their factor.
  • Official ISPRA emission factors year by year (1990–2025), locked when the report is closed.
  • Where a figure is missing the report says “n/a”, never a silent zero.

07

Never leave people stuck

The research curve showed where the experience drops: when people need data they didn't expect, or have to produce new data. So every block opens by saying what it's about and which documents to have at hand, and nothing in the flow is a dead end.

  1. 1In shortWhat the block is about, in a few lines.
  2. 2Data you'll needThe documents to have at hand before starting: gas readings, the electricity bill, revenue, fuel cards.
  3. 3Where you areEvery step of the block on the side, so you always know what's left.
  • Everything saves automatically.
  • Required answers are checked before moving on, and you can always go back.
  • Totals that don't add up raise a warning, not a wall.
  • Help next to each question says where to find the number, for example on the electricity bill.
  • Before the report closes: a banner, and reminder emails 21, 14 and 7 days ahead.

08

Share the work, keep a person in the loop

A sustainability report is never one person's job: energy figures sit with operations, staff figures with HR. Atlas+ lets the admin hand each block to the colleague who has the numbers, and keeps people in the loop before anything goes out.

  1. Admin

    Starts the report and assigns each block to a colleague.

  2. Colleagues

    Fill in their blocks. An external collaborator only sees the ones assigned to them.

  3. Admin

    Checks the summary and confirms it, with a clear warning that it can't be undone.

  4. Crowd Plus

    Reviews the data.

  5. Designer

    Lays out the report on the company's brand.

  6. Company

    Receives the report as a digital PDF and a print-ready file.

  • The home adapts to the role: admin, member or external collaborator.
  • Every invitation shows its real delivery status, not just “sent”.

09

Research didn't stop at launch

We started from assumptions, and the problem was clear enough that we didn't run field research before building. The research came after, and it never stops: the app measures how people use it, the first client works as our tester, and every sales demo brings feedback. Then we look for what different companies have in common, and build that.

Before building · 2025

  1. Every field of the standard, mapped
  2. Where effort peaks for the person filling it in
  3. UX guidelines for the flow

Live · June 2026

After launch, on repeat

  1. MeasureTime on each page, sessions, days to finish
  2. ListenThe first client as a tester, every sales demo
  3. Find the common threadWhat many companies need, not just one
  4. ShipA release, then measure again

What the first client needed: They have more than one site.

What we built: One report for every site, with each site's environmental data assignable to a different colleague.

What the first client needed: They keep some data month by month.

What we built: Data entered yearly, quarterly or monthly, with the yearly total calculated for you.

What the first client needed: They had no tool for their surveys.

What we built: A survey tool inside Atlas+, with templates they can reuse.

What the app measures

  • Time on each page and each block
  • Sessions and their length
  • How often people come back
  • Pages edited per session
  • Days to finish a report
  • Support requests and reply times

10

How I built it

From the Figma prototype to a live product in about two months (April to June 2026), working with AI agents. I set the product decisions and reviewed every step; the agents drafted the technical specs and wrote most of the code, each part in its own copy of the project, merged only after review.

  1. Every field of the standard mapped in FigJam

  2. Wireframes and a video walkthrough

  3. UI, design system and a 45-screen prototype

  4. First commit; the app split into 10 parts, each with its own spec

  5. Live at atlasplus.it

  6. Security audit and three adversarial reviews, 39 issues fixed

  7. Three releases in one month; 11 fixes built in parallel by agents, each released after my check

What the AI did

  • Drafted the technical specs for each part of the app.
  • Wrote most of the code: 328 of 549 commits are co-authored by Claude.
  • Ran code reviews and security audits.

What I decided

Left alone, an AI gives the most average answer: the simplest, most common solution.

  • One question that does the work of many: values calculated on their own, units converted in the background, figures taken from the bills people already have.
  • The report split into self-contained blocks, with collaborators and a hierarchy of users.
  • A home that adapts to the role: admin, member, or an external collaborator who sees only the blocks assigned to them.
  • The custom interface the company wanted, fully designed in Figma, with the design system built step by step.

11 · Results

What changed

15/15modules completed by the first client in about a week
122calculations done by the app, not by the person
~2,200automated tests
3releases in one month (October 2026)

The first client filled in all 15 modules in about a week and described the platform as intuitive.

In a sales demo a prospect's team pointed out it would save them the weeks they now spend compiling the report.

12

Looking back

What I'd do differently

Talk to whoever runs the report before the wireframes, not only to whoever fills it in. I made typing the numbers as simple as I could, but an owner's needs, like several sites, monthly data or sending a survey to hundreds of people from a CSV instead of pasting emails from Excel, only came up with the first client.

What I take with me

In sales everyone suggests a change. Following every client one by one makes the product too specific: the work is finding the common thread that holds it together.