Umbra Space — Product Design

Canopy Scan Mode

A new way to task and capture satellite imagery of earth — no phone calls, no spreadsheets.

Company

Umbra Space

Role

End to end UX research and design. UX Engineering and prototyping

Team

Lead product designer (self), Product manager, software engineering, flight software lead

Timeline

2025 Q1 – Q3

Umbra Space, a leading provider of space imaging, set out to make satellite data truly accessible and on‑demand. Canopy was created to let users get imagery without the antiquated hurdles of phone calls and spreadsheet orders.

Users

U.S. government agencies, sovereign nations, image resellers, analytics companies, journalists, and scientific researchers.

Problem

Users struggled to order from the platform and use technical parameters. The app needed a polished, consistent design and the MVP missed key features—like ordering at scale. Customers leaned on our support team due to shortcomings.

Goals

Steer Canopy from an MVP to a fully-featured product. Introduce new functionality and offerings to help serve customer’s missions. Improve usability and iterate on the design to make the app a joy to use.

Impact

100%

Fully automated ordering

Scan tasks can now be placed end-to-end without any manual intervention from the Umbra team.

High customer satisfaction

Praised by customers for ease of use and a modern, intuitive interface.

Contract requirements met

Delivered on key contractual milestones, unlocking continued customer engagement.

Define and ideate

Through competitor analysis and stakeholder interviews across the satellite imagery industry, I discovered no existing UI pattern for this type of interaction—making this a first-of-its-kind design challenge. Without direct competitors to reference, I looked to adjacent use cases:

Polygon drawing tools in mapping applications
Property boundary tools on real estate platforms
Linear measurement tools in GIS software

Users needed a simple start-to-end point drawing interaction that felt natural on a map interface while providing the precision required for satellite tasking.

Early directions & iterations

Before the version that shipped, I tried a simpler model: place a footprint of a predefined length, then adjust it with a slider. Testing it with real users showed it was cumbersome and didn't hold up, so I moved to a point-to-point drawing interaction instead.

Whether that new interaction actually worked came down to how it felt to drag on a real map, not how it looked in a static frame, so Figma couldn't answer it. I built it as a coded prototype in a sandbox instead, using Claude to handle the complexity of custom draw controls so I could test ideas at the speed the project needed. Mock data was real footprint geometry and coordinate math, the same shape the production API would eventually need.

The first version drew directly on top of Mapbox Draw's default controls. It quickly became clear those controls weren't built for drawing a rectangle with a predefined width, so the interaction didn't hold together. The second version rebuilt the drawing model around the full rectangle and its width instead of a center line, so the scan area was visible as you drew it. The third added the ability to edit an existing footprint and refined the interaction styling based on how it actually felt to use.

First prototype — geometry and coordinate math worked, drawing built on Mapbox Draw's default controls

Second prototype — full rectangle and width shown instead of a center line

Third prototype — editing added, interaction styling refined

Deliverables

Through iterative testing with internal stakeholders, I landed on a direct path drawing solution: click a start point, drag to set direction and length, then click to confirm the end point.