AI Manual Hub Design for HVAC Technicians

Client: None. Manuel AI is an existing platform. Check their website.

Scope: UX Research (persona, problem statement) + Flows + Wireframes + Hi-Fi + AI Interaction Design

Timeline: 1 Week

My role: The whole arc, from persona to pixel

Fokke, an HVAC technician, installs and repairs products from many brands and needs quick access to many manuals. Carrying them is tiring; searching PDFs on a phone mid-job is worse. Manuel AI is an all-in-one digital manual hub: ask a maintenance question, get the exact procedure back. The design problem underneath: AI answers take seconds, and a technician standing on a ladder experiences seconds differently than a designer at a desk.

The core interaction is waiting — the honest version of an AI product's UX, designed instead of hidden.

One persona, taken seriously: everything on screen justified against Fokke's pain points and work context.

Decision 1: show the pipeline, not a spinner. While the answer generates, the interface narrates named agents doing real stages: Memory Expert reviewing context, Intent Detector, Knowledge Navigator, Answer Generator.

Decision 2: design the wait as a feature with three competing options. Instead of one waiting treatment, the study explores three: animations, rotating HVAC facts ("a clogged filter is the #1 cause of system failures"), and an optional trivia mini-game with a score. Rejected the pretense that latency doesn't exist; the options make the wait respectively tolerable, useful, or fun — and testable against each other.

Decision 3: flow chart before wireframes, persona before flows. The sequence was strict: problem statement and persona, then flow charts, then wireframes, then a redesign pass, then hi-fi.

The waiting UI mirrors how retrieval-augmented AI pipelines actually sequence — understand intent, search the corpus, generate — because the person designing the screens understood the architecture underneath them. The transparency isn't decorative; it's a truthful system diagram wearing a chat interface.

A full concept arc from persona to hi-fi, plus three testable waiting-state treatments. Everything delivered in 1 week.