Industry
Utilities
Company
United Systems & Software
Enterprise Resource Planning for Utilities
The problem
Utilities have a highly manual & time consuming workflow, making them prone to mistakes in their daily operations
Our aim was to reduce the time and effort that users spent on these tasks, effectively reducing calls to our support teams. We also wanted to increase the productivity of our development team by creating design standards.​
The product
UPM was one of the core products that let utilities manage their customers' utility accounts, payments, compliance tests, meter readings, devices and work orders.
My role
1. Research to uncover multiple users' pain points and ensure compliance with regulations
2. Prototypes and eventually high-fidelity mockups
3. Scheduling and conducting testing sessions with users
4. Designing a cohesive USS design system from scratch to ensure consistency and maintain standards
Impact
28%
Increase in new customer adoption
20x
Faster task completion
40%
Reduction in customer support calls
10x
Faster output by development
The insight
The product was trying to be all things to all users resulting in a cluttered and confusing interface that lacked purpose
Because of the breadth of users, each user type had unique challenges:
Admin users and field service employees: Struggled to find specific items because of poor search and unnecessary distractions. Had to manually run reports to find tasks they might've missed, resulting in errors.
Managers: Needed a more high level overview of operations and ability to tweak reports more granularly. This inefficiency prevents them from focusing on analysis and decision-making
Difficult navigation patterns
Information heavy & cluttered
Visual inconsistency across products
From
The solution
A utility operations management application that reduces manual errors, has better search and navigation and provides a tailored role-based experience
To
Automation of error-prone tasks
Role-based customization
Implementation of consistent, accessible and heuristically-sound design patterns
Key Changes
1. Better search, filtering and navigation
Rationale: Admin users have tens of thousands of objects to sort through on any given day. System admins struggled to find specific items. It also took over 10 seconds for regular users (& 17 for new users) to navigate to their target location/action
Users now have a robust search system where they can filter, sort or search by keyword to find what they're looking for. The tabbed navigation and custom-made categories help them narrow down their search even further.
2. Side peek
Rationale: Users sometimes navigate to the wrong item and now need to start that entire process again of finding what they're looking for.
A list item's details can be quickly accessed through the side peek so the user's flow isn't broken when they need to quickly sift through multiple entries.
3. Customized dashboard
Rationale: Our average user didn't have the time to figure out how to optimize our platform for their gain on an every day basis
Dashboard design that provides personally relevant interpretations of data instead of making the user do the heavy lifting of figuring out how to use the data. Users are provided insights about how they can optimize resource allocation.
4. Redesigned forms
Rationale: Users didn't use more than half the inputs and options available which indicated a lot of clutter and opportunity for simplifying forms
The 3-column layout provides a cleaner layout and better scannability with less important details hidden from the default view. There is clear indication of editable fields vs text-only fields. Users can also view highlights of the form at the top.
5. Mobile view for field service workers
Rationale: Field service workers typically used the app on their phones and needed access to a much more trimmed version of the app with limited functionality
Field workers are able to access tests, certifications and personal settings without gaining any access to admin features/pages.
Process
Mixed methods research.
Testing.
Design system.
Qualitiative
-
User interviews
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Observations
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Card Sort
-
Diary studies
​
General
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Content audit
-
Journey Mapping
Testing
-
Heuristic analysis
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A/B testing
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Usability testing
Design
-
Design system creation
Design System
Defining patterns.
Creating components.
Crafting tone.
Color tokens created for the design system with guidelines on how and when to use them.
File uploader component with different states.
Decision trees explaining when to use one component or pattern over another (hide vs. disable, checkbox vs. toggle)
Guidelines on voice and tone of UX copy used throughout all of our products.
Learnings
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Working with a legacy software means working with systems that are archaic and resistant to change. I had to maintain a delicate balance of strategically and slowly suggesting improvements without disrupting the technical ecosystem already in place. I had to tone down my designs from being radical to being achievable in the given constraints.
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Building my own relationships with other teams was pivotal with to the success of this project. Since I was the first and only designer at my company, I really had to work to build relationships with experts from other teams and carve out a place for design within the workflow of the organization.
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Aligning stakeholders on questions like "what problems are we trying to solve?", "what metrics of success are we using?"as early as possible proved to be pivotal.
​
(this project is still ongoing so please reach out to me @janhavishah99@gmail.com to talk further about the project)