Role
Researcher
Product Strategy
UI Design
End-to-end UX/UI
Design Process
Tools
Figjam
Notion
Figma
Timeline
3 months
The Problem
After conducting the usability review, we found an overall contradictory and confusing user experience. This is resulting in employee frustration and lowered productivity internally at EAH.
The Solution
The solution is to design an updated user experience and modernized UI that allows users to efficiently manage client information, contracts, and renewals without the frustration of an outdated 10+ year old product.
Usability Review
To get a better idea of the Energy Auction House platform, our team conducted a usability review of the entire product. The first thing we immediately noticed is the opportunity to redesign the dashboard into a powerful tool upon signing in.
Business & User Frustrations
Primary Frustration - Uploading & Viewing Current Pricing to Generate a Quote
Currently, users are struggling to find the current days pricing and to see when it was last updated, making it difficult to get an accurate quote to customers ready to sign a contract. Energy Auction House's goal is to increase revenue by servicing as many businesses as possible, and having a confusing system to quote clients is impacting their ability to do so. Updating these features should provide relief for both the business and the users.
Secondary Frustration - Missed Client Contract Renewals
Based on the user interview we conducted, it is critical to know before-hand when a contract is up for renewal because the businesses can lose their current energy rates. With the existing product, there is nothing to show upcoming contract renewals all in one place, resulting in some clients slipping through the cracks.
Problem Space
Users are frustrated and confused because it is unclear how to manage their clients effeciently and effectively.
How might we provide a smooth client management experience?
Lo-Fi Sketching
Our team finds value in doing an initial sketch session to brain dump ideas as they come before we start working in Figma. Here you can see some of the inspiration for the final product before the product evolved.
Ideation
Since this client was on an extremely strict budget, after sketching we jumped right into brainstorming a new way to display pricing information so that Energy Auction House could start serving clients more efficiently.
What can we improve
Currently, the process to find vendor pricing takes several clicks, so we will be building the new solution to have this information displayed on the first pricing screen.
What can we add
Some features we would like to add include using visuals to bring the information alive, filtering and sorting, modals to make scanning easier, and the ability to upload pricing without exiting the main screen.
Site Map
We focused on the dashboard and customer experience for the site map.
Hi-Fidelity Prototyping
After working through research and ideation, we wanted to experiment and hone in on a direction for the UI. Since this is a text heavy SAAS product, we spent ample time working on text heirarchy and subtle use of the brand colors.
Styles & Components
Our design and engineering team mutually decided to use a ready made design system that we customized along the way to benefit our client, saving us and them time and money for this project. MUI was the perfect decision, allowing us to quickly implement changes as a team for Energy Auction House.
High Fidelity Prototype
In our new prototype, we strived to show how simple it is to view and search for current pricing that would help the product feel more usable. We also included several new features that we discussed in our ideation phase:
Visuals for each vendor
Filtering by location
Pricing upload drawer
Generating a quote on the main screen
Project Reflections
Working within the tightest budget and time constraints of any I've worked on previously, this was an important lesson in how to design as efficiently as possible but provide a client with a valuable, exciting refresh of their product. I was looking forward to these tasks as well:
Refining the dashboard further
Expanding to tablet and mobile screens
Creating a new robust admin portal
Completely redesigning the customer database features and UI