As we enter 2025, sustainable development trends will shape the year ahead. Continuing its legacy of innovation, PassiveLogic, a leader in the US construction industry, is poised to make significant strides with its technology-driven advancements. Under the creative direction of UI/UX design lead Liujun Du, the team has successfully developed two interactive design patents for the Building Studio application. This cutting-edge tool seamlessly integrates a fully embedded energy simulation and site analysis environment to enhance energy efficiency and sustainability in building modeling, setting new standards for eco-friendly design practices.
The patents associated with Building Studio enhance user comprehension of wall construction dynamics within the construction panel. The first patent, Slider With Layers 29/912,376, presents an interactive adjustable slider in conjunction with an animated list module. Each entry on this animated list corresponds to a specific layer in wall construction, effectively displaying material types, visual aesthetics, and textural details. The slider functionality empowers users to modify attributes such as layer thickness and appearance, enabling a wide range of customizable wall configurations. This design initiative seeks to bridge the gap between complex construction knowledge and common people’s understanding, enabling informed material selection. It also particularly contributes to the design of energy-efficient and automated building structures.
Through a flexible parameter set, the second patent, 29/912,377, improves users’ capabilities in constructing walls and objects within the building model. Known as the Inspector Pane, this component allows users to tailor wall designs based on their preferences. The design philosophy behind the Inspector Pane incorporates advanced functionalities while ensuring an intuitive and simple user interface, making it accessible to all users. This dual approach fosters both creativity and precision in building design, as per Liujun.
These two patents are crucial for ensuring the tool delivers accurate energy simulation and site analysis results by simplifying how construction materials and assemblies are applied to building models. By making this process more intuitive for non-experts, they help maintain the precision needed for reliable generative design decisions, ultimately enabling architects and designers to create more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient buildings.
The launch of these patents speaks for the success of Building Studio, which the entire team of PassiveLogic credits a huge part of to Liujun Du. Her prior extensive knowledge in architecture and landscape architecture and passion for creating designs that minimize the challenges of the world today have been at the core of operating at Building Studio. With her efforts, she is committed to driving Building Studio into being the trailblazer in bringing technology-driven innovation into construction. The application was created to promote US construction standards for sustainable development.
Troy Harvey, the CEO and co-founder of PassiveLogic, recognizes Liujun’s contribution to their team as the cornerstone of their application’s success. Starting as a UI/UX intern there, she became the only UI/UX designer on board for Building Studio. Under Liujun’s supervision, the accessibility and efficiency of the PassiveLogic tools have been refined to be more engaging, inclusive, and interactive through a user-friendly interface design that is easy to navigate for people of all ages.
As a team lead, Liujun guided the entire process of design. ‘As the primary designer, I was responsible for identifying user pain points, conceptualizing solutions, and creating detailed design prototypes that blended skeuomorphic elements with interactive features,’she added. Liujun began the project by conducting a comprehensive analysis of the existing research and evaluating the available tools to ensure she had a solid understanding of the current landscape. Her research revealed that existing BIM tools rely on text-heavy interfaces with minimal real-time visual feedback, making wall assembly design difficult for non-experts to navigate. Users must manually input data across multiple views, lacking immediate spatial context, which complicates the workflow and increases the risk of errors. The steep learning curve further restricts accessibility, limiting these tools to trained professionals. With this foundation, she proceeded to user testing, where she carefully gathered feedback and iteratively refined the design based on real-world interactions. Throughout the process, Liujun collaborated closely with the engineering team, consistently monitoring the design’s functionality and aesthetics to ensure they aligned with both technical requirements and user needs.
Beyond her user-centric approach, Liujun is deeply passionate about sustainability, a commitment shaped by her studies in botany, ecological planning, architecture, and construction at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and UC Berkeley, focusing on ecological and environmental design. This passion drives her to integrate environmental considerations into every project she undertakes and has remained a guiding force in both her professional and personal life. Now, a great part of her work involves empowering people to make a much better, informed, environmentally sound decision for a better future. Every design she creates makes a difference in how people engage with their surroundings, making a lasting, meaningful change. For example, besides her patent-pending designs, such as interactive sliders and panels for wall assembly, which lower the barrier for non-experts and make sustainable building management more accessible, her innovations in Autonomy Studio enhance real-time building monitoring through clear data visualization and interactive wiring diagrams, enabling users to make informed decisions about building performance and system efficiency.
With her unstoppable attitude toward creating the impossible, Liujun Du is forging ahead in a field often assumed to be male-dominated. Motivated by a desire to create groundbreaking designs that have never been attempted before, she is redefining modern work ethics while promoting evidence-based solutions for sustainability, environmental protection, and prosperity. It is easy to see that she will bring many more tech-driven solutions to construction in 2025.
For more details and information, please visit https://liujun.framer.website/
