Multiple angled screenshots of a software application interface with forms and settings.

Online Portal - Images sanitised for confidentiality

APPLICATION PORTAL FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY ASSETS

Project overview

This energy sector client sought to streamline the process of applying for and installing renewable energy resources, such as solar panels and batteries. The previous fragmented and manual process needed an improved, streamlined experience that would reduce user error, frustration, and assessment time.

My role

As the UX/UI Designer and business analyst, I worked alongside our project lead, technical business analyst lead, process designers, energy sector subject matter experts, and key client stakeholders. My primary focus was to visualise the future state through personas, journey mapping, and low-fidelity wireframes of key hero journeys. My core contributions included:

Establishing and refining personas representing 6 key user groups, including end customers, energy retailers and installers, and application assessment staff
Assisted development of renewed CX principles and strategy
Designed 2 in-depth future state end-to-end user journey maps for residential and commercial application flows, illustrating current state paint points and future opportunities alongside persona thoughts, feelings, and actions
Creating low-fidelity wireframes for 3 key hero journeys, including Figma prototyping.

The problem

The rapid growth and popularity of renewable energy systems, coupled with recent legislative changes and the increasing complexity of connection requirements meant that our client was receiving a higher volume of applications than before, on a system that wasn't designed to support that scale.

The fragmented, heavily manual process resulted in delays, duplication, and poor user experience for customers, installers, retailers, and network operators.

Through analysis of previous documentation and a series of in-depth stakeholder workshops, we found the following key pain points:

Fragmented and disconnected ecosystem
- Multiple applications on different websites required for applicants to complete, without clarity on the purpose of each step
- No single source of truth for data across systems and stakeholders
Poor data quality and inefficient manual processes
- Applications can be submitted with incomplete or incorrect information
- Duplicate data entry across systems and actors, with no established process to validate data accuracy
Limited visibility and transparency
- Applicants and customers have limited visibility on application status and decisions
- Customers are often unclear why applications are rejected or what actions are needed to proceed
Poor user experience and limited guidance
- Customers and installers are unclear on what they need to do, and when they need to do it
- Applicants are not able to edit applications once they have been submitted, requiring resubmission for a small change.

Where we come in

Overall, the current DER connections process is not fit-for-purpose in a future with increasing DER adoption. It creates friction for users, inefficiencies for operators, and risks to data quality and compliance.

A redesigned, digitally-enabled, and user-centred connection process is required to:

Streamline end-to-end workflows
Improve data quality and automation
Provide transparency and guidance to users
Support scalability and future DER growth

The process

Personas

Discovery for this project was completed in a previous piece of work, so we were able to take the user insights from previous user testing to create a series of 6 personas representing the key user groups of this solution.

Workshops

I designed and facilitated a series of human-centred interactive design workshops with stakeholders across 5 key business groups and organisations to gather feedback on personas, renewed CX principles, user journey maps, recommended opportunities, and process maps.

UI design

I led the design of low-fidelity wireframes across 3 hero journeys, including:

Account registration and login, and organisation registration on the application portal
Starting, completing, and submitting a renewable energy application as a retailer/installer on behalf of a customer
Adding requested additional information in to a submitted application in the assessment phase, and resubmitting.

The submission of these designs included the creation of clickable prototypes on Figma of each of the journeys to assist hand-off of the final wireframes.

The outcome