App demo
Willamette Valley ReadingsWillamette Valley Utilities, Corvallis
Route 42 — Corvallis North
21 of 34 read, 13 to go, the round ends at 4:00 PM. Two figures cannot go out as they stand, three apartments were empty — and since 9:12 AM everything has been sitting offline on the device.
- In the hands of
- Meter reader on a route
- Shown on
- iOS — title centred, swipe bar below
- Replaces
- Replaces the paper reading list, the digits typed in again in the evening and the query eight weeks later when nobody remembers the meter. Thirty-four meter points are captured once instead of twice, and every implausible figure carries a photo of the dial — in eight weeks that is the only thing still supporting it.
Everything in this demo is laid out and none of it acts: buttons only report that they have no effect in the demo, checkboxes are fixed, input fields lead nowhere. Nothing is stored, sent or fetched.
How Awelior would approach this project
Willamette Valley Utilities, Corvallis is invented — the way it is built is not. None of this is work delivered for a client. It is the shape we would give such a project — with the same depth, but without a client who would have to answer for it.
Where it starts
Wye Valley Utilities reads its meters once a year on a cycle. The round sheet is paper, the digits get typed up again in the evening, and when somebody queries a figure eight weeks later there is nothing but a number on a page. An annual bill is built from that figure, and a customer can formally object to it — that is the standard the app has to meet.
Decisions
An implausible reading is accepted and held back
When the calculated consumption falls far outside what the metering point has ever used, the app records the figure and flags the deviation. It neither talks the number down nor carries last year's forward: whether it is a transposed digit, a meter change or a burst pipe is settled by customer service with the customer, not by an arithmetic step at a cellar door.
The photograph is the evidence
Dial, meter number and seal are captured on the spot and attached to the metering point. When the figure is queried eight weeks later the picture is the only thing still supporting it — a typed digit is not.
No access is also a result
Locked cellar, nobody in, card posted: that gets recorded rather than skipped. A round from which blank lines quietly disappear looks better in the evening and produces estimated bills the following year.
Deliberately left outNo comparison with other households. How many people live in a flat is none of the meter reading's business; the only comparison is with the history of the same metering point. And the number on the reader's ID card carries no readable pattern — an identifier in a demo points either at nothing or, worse, at something.
What is in it
- Screens
- 5
- Tabs
- 4
- Content blocks
- 17
- Languages
- 4
Navigation responds, including the route from the round into a single metering point and back. The entry field, the camera, the clarification flow and the outbound queue are fully rendered and inert; the four states have a view of their own.
How it would go on
Connection to the billing system
Metering points, prior-year figures and cyclical work orders come from there, readings and reports go back. A reading that lives in two systems is one system too many.
Plausibility and clarification
Which deviation triggers a query, who handles it, how a self-reading is requested and what applies after a meter change. That is the supplier's domain knowledge, not a threshold in the software.
Identification and access
Anyone ringing a stranger's doorbell to get into the cellar must be able to identify themselves, and the number has to be verifiable with the supplier. How a card is issued, checked and revoked is part of the undertaking.
An app like this for your business?
Willamette Valley Readings is invented — the fit is not. Apps come about exactly this way: from the routes that already exist in a business, only without the paper in between.
Sample app by Awelior. Invented business, invented data, nothing stored.