Project Overview
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), one of the UAE’s leading Freezone authorities, embarked on a bold initiative to transform its community services into a unified Smart City digital portal. The portal was envisioned as a central hub connecting DMCC business owners, residents, and visitors with a comprehensive suite of services—from permits and licensing to events, directories, and family activities.
This web-based platform needed to accommodate both B2B and B2C use cases, integrating DMCC’s internal services with key government offerings in a way that felt seamless, secure, and user-friendly.
The primary challenge was creating an experience that enabled:
- Easy discovery and application for commercial and residential permits.
- Access to an updated community directory (restaurants, retail, lifestyle).
- Real-time visibility into upcoming events with booking integration.
- On-demand support via FAQs and predictive search.
- User flows that differentiated and served the needs of both business entities and residents
My Role & Contribution
As a UX Designer, I was tasked with leading the user experience strategy—from stakeholder alignment to design validation. I worked closely with cross-functional teams that included the product team, developers, and marketing, as well as direct stakeholders from DMCC.
- Conducted extensive product and ecosystem research, analyzing how other smart city initiatives (locally and globally) tackled similar multi-user challenges.
- Collaborated with DMCC stakeholders to identify high-priority service flows and friction points in the existing service infrastructure.
- Organized user interviews and live testing sessions with; Business owners within the Freezone, Residents managing move-ins/move-outs, Visitors looking for lifestyle services and events
- These sessions helped validate assumptions and uncover needs around transparency, usability, and self-service expectations from diverse user segments.
- Created a unified IA model that consolidated DMCC and government services under clearly defined categories without overwhelming the user.
- Structured the portal into modular content zones; Permits & Licenses, Community Directory, Events & Activities, Move-in/Move-out Services, Help & Support
- Developed audience-specific entry points, tailoring dashboards for B2B users (e.g., event organizers) vs. B2C users (e.g., residents needing facility access or support).
- Designed low to mid-fidelity wireframes to test key user flows including; Submitting a permit application, Searching the community directory, Booking events, Submitting a support request
- Implemented smart navigation and predictive search to guide users to relevant information based on intent and user profile.
- Focused on self-service optimization, especially within the Help & Support center, by integrating a robust, context-aware FAQ system.
- Collaborated with the UI team to ensure clarity and consistency in visual hierarchy, ensuring information-heavy screens remained clean and accessible.
- Advocated for responsive and modular design to ensure accessibility across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
- Provided interaction guidelines for; Hover states, Inline field validations, Step-by-step form submissions
- Worked with developers on UI validation rounds to ensure fidelity of design across browsers and devices.
Impact & Outcome
- The new portal significantly reduced support ticket volume, thanks to improved self-service capabilities and intelligent search tools.
- Permit and move-in/out submission success rates increased, with users completing applications faster and with fewer errors.
- The community directory and events section saw a notable spike in usage, with many residents discovering previously unknown amenities.
- Stakeholders praised the modular UX design, which allowed new service modules to be added with minimal disruption to the existing IA.
Reflection
The DMCC Smart City Portal was a landmark project that demonstrated how complex public-private services can be simplified through thoughtful design. By integrating a range of disconnected experiences into a single unified portal, we created a digital foundation for DMCC’s smart city ambitions—enabling users to manage their lives and businesses more independently, intuitively, and efficiently.