Tekz (redacted) is a clean energy provider that serves the Texan deregulated market (residents can choose any eligible provider). They offer several plan types as well as provide additional savings through managing third-party energy optimisers, e.g. solar panels, EV chargers and smart thermostats.
The business goals for 2023 focus on upselling energy optimisers (EOs), which the sales team identifies as not yet visible or well-known to their existing customer base. The hypothesis is that existing customers are simply unaware of EOs or are intimidated by the uncertainty on upfront costs and ROI.
Demonstrate a proof of concept for a digital showroom that
My role: UX design, UI design, prototyping
Collaborator(s): Design and EO Sales teams
Figma
UserTesting
The team was tasked with developing a concept for the digital showroom. And it was a great fun brainstorming exercise. No limits, so anything was possible! However, the first challenger presented itself early - no research tools. Since the team was in-between User Testing contracts, there was no available tool to conduct exploratory interviews and usability testing on the intended customer base for the showroom.
Based on recent existing data, I was aware of the need to educate existing customers. However, as the goal was to educate to upsell EOs, we had no existing personas to gather different motivations for that aspiration – is it because they are seriously looking to buy? Or to gather different options? Or just because the marketing campaign made it look cool? We don't 100% know, because there is currently no access to the intended customer base as previously mentioned.
To remedy this, I adopted an industrial psychology concept that encompasses the main pain points and goals that the consumers usually experience.
The information-driven Administrator and future-oriented Dreamer were particularly interesting to explore as they're more invested to dive into the Showroom so we divided the work on the personas. I focused on Gina the Dreamer's journey:
Gina the Dreamer is looking to buy her first home and is looking at solar potential for a couple of property candidates after work. She's not yet a Tekz customer but some of the homes she is looking at are serviced by Tekz while others aren't. She focuses on playing around the Showroom so she might like a quick experience with presets that impact her potential savings.
Once the personas were presented and the design team received feedback from the EO team, we needed to figure out the high-level customer journey, from entering the Showroom to gaining something from the visit.
Now, the problem was figuring out the ideal outputs from the showroom and the minimal user input needed to get there. The EO team was included early on to gather requirements and also to identify data constraints. Existing customers provide historical usage data on their homes we can use + publicly available energy data like solar potential scores. For guests, the experience had to be limited with some publicly available data around the given address to align with our Dreamer persona's limited investment in the Showroom.
I took on the bulk of prototyping, while the graphic designer attached to this project supplemented images and product objects. The purpose was to buy in the executive leadership's support for the Showroom for 2023, so it was important to me that it looked as realistic as possible. A degree of realism, though requiring more time, better conveys and sells the concept to a non-design audience.
Linking the screens brought in new interactivity questions that weren't considered before. I initially tested the collapsable drawer with tabs (v1), followed by a fixed right-side drawer (v2). The first iteration also had home settings for non-customers like Gina that would allow us to calculate some kind of a range on savings while also helping to visually bring Gina's dream alive on the screen.
The following are areas of interest for future iterations:
Since there are several entry points to the Showroom, we have limited control over the external messaging around what it actually is and does. To remedy this, a simple 3-step onboarding process was introduced to give Gina the needed context before interacting with the Showroom.
According to Nielsen Norman, the animation duration should be around 100-500 ms and often is unnecessarily long in the wild (Laubheimer, 2020). However, due to the complexity of the animation, it's supported by UX research that the rule of thumb can be applied here – I used 400-800 ms per product application's animation so it just about doesn't look sudden and the output from the user's actions can be observed in real time.
Additionally, accessibility was woven into this design from the start - the movement is not sudden or complex, and the desktop view allows several interaction points to add/remove EOs (drag & drop the product icon, click the icon, click the EO label on the home).
The mobile screen isn't ideal for a showroom experience, so I treated it as a separate, less "big gesture" experience. Gina would want to see something quick and end goal-oriented on her phone. Instead of a drag & drop motion, standard tapping is more accessible. Animations' run time is also shortened to ~400 ms or less.
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The Showroom has significantly changed in the scope and functions from v1 to v2.
Ideally, v1 would calculate savings, even quotas, based on available data on the home, the EOs chosen and the solar potential score that we can pull from Google's Project Sunroof.
However, I had to descope by excluding pricing & quotas. With limited back-end resources, the stakeholders pushed to educate the users just enough to get them to generate sale leads without savings calculations.
The final presentation consisted of Gina the Dreamer's (the "Prospect") and Alvaro the cautiously optimistic Administrator's journeys (Tekz's "Customer"), however, since my work focused on the "Prospect", this study will focus on Gina's part only.
Gina lands in the Showroom wanting know what's possible for her dream home - a smart thermostat would be cool in a Texan summer to save on AC for sure, but what does each EO do? She can either click on the help icons adjacent to the products or just scroll down. The content is succinct, just enough to pique her interest - she doesn't want to deal with specifics for a home she doesn't have. But an external link with full details would definitely be of interest to the Administrator.
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She would ideally love to be more energy-sufficient so she drags solar panels on the home. Then, Gina tries to drag an electricity plan icon but the home she is looking at isn't serviced by Tekz. She wants to take note of the showroom so emails herself but notices she can talk with someone to find out more details.
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Now what would happen if Gina already had an eligible home and is interested to hear what benefits being a Tekz customer would be with an electricity plan AND solar panels? After entering a qualifying address, a plan is suggested based on EOs selected. Once Gina is ready to move to the next step, she emails herself the list to refer to later and gives a time and phone number for Tekz to contact. She doesn't need to enter her email with the appointment confirmation again since she's done so earlier.
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This was my first full hands on project with Tekz. It was a perfect opportunity to educate myself about their products, including the many plans they offer.
It was my first time experiencing logistical issues around research, but existing data really came in handy! It is unfortunate we could not achieve buy-in for 2023. The limited scope reduced the showroom's value at the moment.
Nonetheless, the Showroom now has a secure foundation to build off of when it is put to the forefront with EO products in the future thanks to the constructive feedback given during the presentation. The Design team has also accomplished exploring several venues for sales generation and broad yet unique value the product brings to Tekz.
