Case study · Olarm Command Centre
Control room tools, designed from scratch
Olarm Command Centre is the cloud platform armed response companies and control rooms use to manage thousands of Olarm-connected alarm systems.
Armed response control rooms asked for two things it didn’t have, and so did a national retailer running thousands of stores across South Africa: a way to run a site’s alarm areas remotely, and a way to organise devices into groups. Neither existed, so I designed both from the ground up.
The ask
Operators needed to arm, part-arm, disarm and schedule a site’s alarm areas, and check or bypass zones, without leaving Command Centre. They also needed a way to sort thousands of devices into groups they could actually work with.
Who uses it
Head office security teams at multi-site national retailers, and the 300+ ARCs with control rooms among Olarm’s 900 partners, who use it when they need to act on a client’s site.
My role
UX and UI for both features, from the first flows to final screens, handed to the development team in Figma.
Where it is now
V1.1 of Area Control and Device Groups were built and shipped. V2 of Area Control is the next phase. See Command Centre on olarm.com.
The client · National retailer
900 stores, one head office
The retailer has Olarm in 900 of its stores. With that many sites, leaving every store manager to arm and disarm on their own was a security risk: one missed arm or wrong setting, multiplied across hundreds of stores.
They wanted head office to check and schedule security at every Olarm site remotely, through Command Centre.
Result
The retailer was very happy with it. It changed how they manage security: store alarms are now checked and scheduled from head office instead of store by store.
01 · Area Control · V1
Everything for an area in one row
Each area of the panel gets one strip of controls: Arm, Part arm with its three profiles, Schedule arm, Disarm and View zones.
The status reads in plain words, so “Area 3 – Not ready · Zone 4 is active” tells the operator why it won’t arm. Zones and scheduling open in a side panel, so the areas stay in view.
02 · Area Control · V1.1 Built
Built for a control room, not one house
Control rooms look after panels with many areas and dozens of zones, so V1.1 is built for scale:
- States in words and colour: green for disarmed, amber for not ready, red for armed. The colours follow Command Centre’s own colour principles, so operators recognise them instantly.
- Page-level actions: Arm all, Disarm all, Bypass all zones and Schedule arm sit at the top of the page.
- Filters: filter areas by state, and zones by active, closed or bypassed, with search.
- Zones always open: the zones panel stays open beside the areas.
- Schedules as a list: you add schedules one by one instead of filling in a form for every profile.
03 · Area Control · V2 Next phase
Zones inside the area they belong to
V2 is about screen space, better zone management and fewer clicks.
Zones move out of the side panel and sit under the area they’re assigned to, so an operator sees and bypasses them in place. That frees the side panel for scheduling, which becomes one button for the whole page.
04 · Device groups Built
From one device to thousands
Command Centre’s promise is thousands of alarm systems in one platform, and groups are how an operator keeps that manageable.
Groups live in Settings and show each device’s serial, reference, status and product. Actions change with what you select: destructive actions only appear once something is ticked.
- 01 · GroupsEach group lists its devices with serial, reference, online status and the product.
- 02 · CreateCreate group adds an empty card, ready to name and fill.
- 03 · AddAdd device opens a searchable picker. Tick as many as you need.
- 04 · RemoveTick devices and Add device turns into a red Remove devices.
- 05 · DeleteTick whole groups and the header swaps to Delete groups or Cancel.
The takeaway
A national retailer and the control rooms asked for it, and I designed it from scratch. V1.1 shipped and changed how the retailer manages security across 900 stores. The next phase is already designed.
