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Iberdrola Clientes
Developing a smarter relationship with Energy Management
CLIENT
Iberdrola
DATE
2017
MY ROLE
Product Design
User Research
Design Sistems
UI designer
Design Strategy
User research
WORK WITH
Diego Seara
César Casado
Ruth Otero
Réka Pusztai-István
Fanni Harsányi
✦ CHALLENGE
Giving a makeover to the top-rated Energy Management app to amp up customer digitalization
Back in 2011, Iberdrola kicked off the commencement of a shift on the way people communicate with their customer app — a journey of digital transformation to redesign functionalities associated with managing energy plans, visualizing electric bills, and launching a brand-new Smart Home HUB with IoT services. The aim? Creating a seamless, intuitive experience for users to manage their energy consumption and smart home devices all in one spot.
- Planning the initial UX research to uncover shortcomings in the onboarding process and subsequent customer journeys
- Conducting Desk Research to draft a comparable analysis of widely-used SmartHome Apps.
- Being at the forefront steering the design blueprint, ensuring the newly developed app meets the customer requirements, aligns with the technical and business guidelines—all while playing by the rules (fulfilling regulatory and legal stipulations).
- Evaluating the Product Definition to ensure that the MVP proposal was beneficial to customers and devoid of usability problems.
- Collaborating cohesively with the technical team, providing support in every development stage.
At the time of starting this project, the Iberdrola app was the best rated in its sector. So why change something that works?
Results & Key metrics
After launching the new version in 2019, the enhancement in key indicators was effectively seen as depicted:
Adoption of the interaction model as the European standard
+24%
Increase in Monthly active users (MAU)
+16pp
Rise in the Net Promoter Score (NPS)
+1,1pp
Boost in ratings on App Stores
-21%
Drop in back-office calls
↓ PROCESS
Start by grasping two aspects: customer desires and business objectives
We kicked things off with a 3-week Sprint 0, diving deep into user interviews, reviewing every feature, and prioritizing a backlog served to lay the foundations of the project and shape the application wanted to achieve.
Target users
We conducted 12 comprehensive interviews with a mix of users, from heavy-users to casual ones (with 1-2 supply points) to get the lowdown on their experiences and gather insights.
Focused on users aged 22-60, who were already part of the Iberdrola family—defined by the biz as our target audience.
Engaged with folks who were both aware and clueless about their energy consumption habits.
Interview outcomes
Contextual Assistance
Users were struggling to tell the difference between the contextual assistance components and the app's overall interface design, making it hard to navigate and achieve their goals
‘Products & Services’ and ‘Smart Home’ icons
Confusing icons led to a lot of head-scratching, as users didn’t get what each symbol signifies
Menu Options Catering to Contract Types
The app didn’t have the necessary menu options for users to manage easily basic tasks related with their contracts
Clarity on required data to Signup
The sign-up process was missing clear information on mandatory data, causing user dissatisfaction and rendering them unable to successfully finish the registration
↓ PROCESS
Establishing the foundations: Translating insights & business goals into product design definition
From Sprint 1 to 4, we jumped into the Strategic Definition phase. Created to define, side-by-side with Project Managers and IT, our product design outcomes
Key objectives
1
Transform the app now as the main communication channel between Iberdrola and its customers
Revamped screens to improve operability with the aim to provide a clear understanding of energy consumption.
Developed a fresh, easy-to-use visual system that was easy to use throughout the entire navigation.
2
Promote the adoption of intelligent devices at home and in-app management through SmartHome area
Create the new SmartHome to manage all the IoT devices.
Add features like Smart Thermostat, Smart Assistant, Smart Climate Control and Smart consumption monitor functionalities (which Iberdrola users absolutely loved).
3
Launch and optimize the Energy Wallet
Ensure customers can purchase green energy packages for 6, 12, or 24 months with fixed, transparent pricing.
Improve the payment system, offering flexible options such as fixed monthly installments or prepayments, to maximize customer savings through discounts.
4
Maximize tech use by boosting app performance and Information Architecture
Reduce UX information or architecture to ease the new app built on a clean layered architecture with updated concurrency management, guaranteeing a quality and scalable product.
👀 Adding the 'Smart Home' feature for IoT smart devices
After redefining all the main UX problems related with Information Architecture and some usability issues in the secondary levels of the app, we start to redefine some of the visuals of the app to make it more appealable.
A visual-driven General vision
Based on the findings generated by the qualitative research, we defined an overall dashboard that could visually display the status of each connected device in the ‘Smart Home’ section.
New icon and screen imaginary
A set of new micro-illustrations were developed and use for app visuals and marketing Paid Media campaings.
We've also teamed up with the Motion Designers at the agency to developed a new set of onboarding animations with the recently illustrations.
At first, the development team implement all the micro-animations in a video format but it wasnt far from ideal because they add a lot of unneccesary file size to the app causing Performance problems.
So we make some Proof of concept testing in 1 Sprint to include them in Lottie format. It was quite a challenge try to ensure perfect Lottie exports for iOS platforms and also to get seamless animations without any flickering.
👀 The launch is never the end, yet merely a fresh start
After months of intense work, the final sprints were focused on Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) to identify not just usability problems, but also to react quickly on identified issues and test out new solutions and implement the final adjustments on time to do a soft-launch to a batch of 200.000 users choose by the go-to-market team.
From the launch month and for a span of two months, team meetings involving product, QA, marketing, and Iberdrola management were held bi-weekly to review direct customer feedback, convert it into actionable tasks, and prioritize these items in the product backlog. We set a max of two sprints to tackle any issues that popped up, after which we would transition into a new discovery phase.
