Website & Web App For Arka Energy
Overview
As an early-stage startup in the competitive US solar market, Arka Energy needed a compelling customer-facing web application to stand out and succeed. Their goal is to provide customers with high-end solar roofs that offer both aesthetic appeal and energy savings. The company aimed to help people reduce their environmental impact and save money on their energy bills in the long-run. This project involved creating a customer-facing web application that allows users to order, monitor, and manage their solar roofs. Solar roof installations are a complex and long process including many steps and several months of preparation, planning & approvals. The key aspects of this project were initial research, mapping out an entirely new application and creating a simple user journey to minimise user effort.
Role UX Designer ( UX Research, IA, User Journey, Ideation, Wires & UI)
Team 2 UX Designers (including me), Design Lead, Project Manager
Timeline 4 months
The Goal
The over-arching goal of this project was design a seamless user journey that simplifies the complex solar roof purchasing & installation process. Here are some of the goals we defined as a team:
To design a lean process with minimal steps to execute a property buying journey.
Seamless customer journey from pre to post-installation.
Design to minimise user abandonment.
Standing out against competitors.
To educate people about solar energy and it’s benefits.
To have personalised customer journey
Workshops & Interviews
A discovery workshop was conducted over a span of a week. The scope of this project being large meant we had to spend extra time to understand Arka's offering, technical knowledge about solar shingles and map out the process of installing a solar roof. During the discovery our desk research involved a through competitor analysis and crafting USP's for Arka to stand out.
We conducted interviews with 10 users. We created empathy maps, customer journey maps and persona's for each of the 4 user's in our target audience.
Competitor Analysis
User Understanding
Through out research phase we identified four user groups. We mapped out user persona's and customer journey map's for each user.
Homeowner looking to re-roof : Our primary users, these are home-owners looking for high-end or luxury roofs.
Green Consumer : Our secondary users. Millennials who are environmentally conscious .
Customer interested in premium roofs : Our tertiary users, the key appeal is the aesthetics of solar roofs compared to solar panels.
Electric vehicle owner : Also our tertiary users. These users tend to want to get solar roofs to keep up with higher electricity consumption of electric vehicles.
Mapping Out The Application
To map out the overarching structure and functionality of the application, we started with iteration over and creating a feature list consisting of a top level of features for the application. Then we proceeded to create an Information Architecture and then mapped out the 6 major task flows for the user. We went over multiple iterations as a team before moving on to wire framing.
Design Direction
Designing for Trust : For an emerging brand like Arka Energy creating trust over their brand is prominent.
Helpful & Supportive: Using chatbot, providing FAQ and forms for queries, having great customer support readily available is also a big bonus.
Create an Assisted Journey: Walkthroughs and tool-tips.
Lean Process/ Minimal Steps : Reducing the cognitive load without the use of technical jargons. Well grouped and brief data and features.
Wires & Iterations
We create wires for the entire application, there were over a 100 screens, but here displayed are a few of those. We went over a couple of iterations considering client feedback. We tested out 4 flows with 10 users - getting a quote for a solar roof, going over the steps to install it, viewing the roof analytics and creating a support request for maintenance.
Final Designs
Gauri Rajmane