Single platform for business partners: Electric vehicles web app (b2b)

The Challenge

To create a product where charge stations and energy supply can be monitored in a singular space using EVT, CPinc & ERS. In later releases this would also include finance and energy reporting.

Research and planning

• Interviewing of stakeholders to better understand their vision of the product and the business needs.

• Working with Business analysts to understand the technical constraints and business needs better

• Planning roadmap and work streams 

  
  

Lead:

• Lead a team of 3 designers 

• Creating and implementing a new design system which contained both global and product specific styles and components which were then housed in storybook

• Product strategy and journey designs

• Implementing new ways of working / design process

  
  

Ways of working

As UX lead I created a process within the agile environment that I felt would work best for me and my team without hindering the process for everyone else involved.

• Each sprint were 2 weeks working through defined stories via product owner.

• During this process identifying pain points with the wider team (devs, PO, stakeholders, SME)

• Regular workshops, Design review and development review

• Sign off every two weeks or as and when needed by internal team then by stakeholders.

Defining personas and user needs

After checking out the competition, scouring into the portals of existing companies that we were about to start working with and getting data from in order to generate the portal some of the main ones being EVT (electric vehicles technology) and Charge Point inc. We had our conclusion of 4 main personas in no particular order:

• Finance manager (looks after billing and finances)

• Energy manager ( looks after supply)

• Fleet manager (looks after vehicles)

• Station/ Service manager (looks after a station or a multitude of)

I conducted two case studies from our stakeholders as they were our main point of call during this process until we had friendly users (later on in the process. I already had a multitude of questions ready surrounding what the initial thoughts were for this product, a brief explanation from them both in what their vision was (to see if they align) and if they didn’t how could we amalgamate views. What the most meaningful parts would be etc.

It became clear once interviews and research process was over that this was going to need to be released in stages as there were some super tight deadlines and we needed to gather a solid idea of what could actually be released for MVP. 

Design system and implementation

I started by:

1. reviewing best practices and cross-examine the existing components to identify key issues.

2. Sectioning out existing and future Drax EV specific elements to determine the most appropriate visualisation per category.

3. Designing all components and iteratively changing them to ensure they scale.

4. Providing guidelines that will allow developers to craft a Drax EV view.

5. Apply the system the platform & test in production.

   
   

Flexible components have been incorporated into the design system. They are responsive to support tablet for B2B, and also feature a wide range of precise variants to speed up design iterations.

Prototyping and validation

Reviewing the initial wireframes and applying the UI, I started the refinement process. The journeys for release one had all been created and updates were being made to each one as I discovered things which needed alternatives or slight changes in the UI e.g collapsible filters. There are all bits and bobs which enhance the experience of the user and create things to be a bit more seamless.

There was constant chit chat with the developers, BA’s and the like in order to make sure we were all heading in the right direction, a demo was presented every week to us in order to review and check consistency of build against design and journey. This helps alot with tying everything together and make sure its all on track.

Once we had the build the MVP test site was launched, with the help of tools like Hot jar & Analytics we were able to set up our friendly customers in order to see how things were performing off the back of our MVP launch! This brings me on nicely into what we are curating now in release two. There are alot of findings off the back of how the users are using the product and these are sure to be implemented in the next release along side more requirements and amazing features.