ekaterinburg.design

Sloy — Geospatial Platform from 0 to 1

A geospatial platform for exploring data through interactive map layers, filters, and object details.

Sloy mobile interface for exploring geospatial data layers

Outcome One scalable foundation for multiple geospatial products

Role: Product Designer
Team: Product managers, analysts, engineers, designers
Scope: Product architecture, design system, specifications, implementation support

Sloy is a geospatial data platform operating across Armenia, Finland, and Russia. It aggregates data from multiple sources and makes it accessible through interactive map layers.

I established a shared product and design foundation that reduced repeated work across Sloy-based products and allowed recurring layers and object types to be implemented without a bespoke design process.

Context

Sloy powers map-based products with different datasets, audiences, and geographic areas, including the Ekaterinburg Infomap. Each product needs layers, filters, map objects, and detailed information, but those elements should still feel like parts of one platform.

When I joined, the team had a UI kit. Similar components had multiplied, design and implementation did not always match, and adding a new dataset often meant designing another custom interface.

Sloy desktop map with configurable data layers, road-safety indicators, and object details

Problem

Cleaning up components alone would not make the platform easier to extend. The team needed to identify which interactions stayed the same across products and which details should change with the data.

That foundation had to support desktop and mobile use while the team continued delivering its MVP.

Approach

I mapped the recurring interaction: discover a layer, adjust its parameters, read the map, select an object, and inspect its details. This became the basis for configurable layers and object cards.

I consolidated overlapping components, introduced semantic interface tokens, and documented component states and behaviour. I also separated interface colours from thematic map palettes, so product controls and data visualisations could evolve for different purposes.

Sloy desktop interface with the data-layer menu and a cultural-heritage object card — Layer discovery leads through map exploration to selected-object details

Design-system specifications for data layers, histograms, sliders, and checkboxes — Reusable layer anatomy supports different datasets without a new interface for each one

Reusable layer configurations for buildings, heritage, road safety, routes, and environmental data — Reusable layer anatomy supports different datasets without a new interface for each one

Composable object-card components for heritage, road-safety, and building data — Object cards share a stable information structure across different data types

Object-card variants built from the same reusable information structure — Object cards share a stable information structure across different data types

Collaboration

I worked with product managers, analysts, developers, and other designers to decide which behaviours belonged in the shared system. I reviewed the implementation with developers so the Figma library reflected how the product actually worked.

The ekaterinburg.dev team with portraits, names, and roles — The ekaterinburg.dev team

Multi-surface design

The same layer-based interaction had to work on desktop and mobile screens. I documented responsive layouts and controls so the product could preserve its underlying model across different screen sizes.

Design-system specifications for map scale, zoom, compass, geolocation, and search controls — Documented controls and responsive layouts align the library with production behaviour

Reusable buttons, links, switches, icons, tags, tooltips, and Sloy identity assets — Documented controls and responsive layouts align the library with production behaviour

Sloy color system separating thematic map palettes from semantic interface colors

Solution

The resulting foundation provides reusable patterns for layers, filters, map controls, and object details across products and screen sizes. New datasets can use the same interaction model while supplying their own content and configurations.

Impact

Shared foundation: Production MVP The shared foundation supported Sloy’s production MVP.
Design reuse: Reusable patterns Reduced the need for separate designs for recurring layers and object types.
Project achievement: Competition win Sloy won an open-data competition in Armenia.
Further development: Funding The project received funding for further development.

Paul Lefrank Head of Design @ ekaterinburg.design

“Artem’s the kind of person who actually puts in the work — reliable, thorough, and never afraid to push back when something doesn’t feel right. He asks the questions other people skip and somehow always manages to land on a solution that makes sense.”