new features | mobile app • responsive web
Solar Data Visualizations
Created two new modules to display solar production and consumption data in a visual language for homeowners to understand.
my role
data decipherer
Our main demographic of solar homeowners (ages 50-65) did not understand how much solar energy they were producing and using.
My job was to conduct research on exactly what these education gaps were, understand what data we had available and parse this information into data visualizations that made sense to our users and decreased their confusion and number of NPS comments related to this pain point.
the objective
simplify solar data
There were 2 main complaints we were seeing in our NPS surveys related to homeowner education:
1. "I don't understand how much of my home energy needs my solar production covers- why am I still paying a utility bill?"
2. "I don't understand how much solar energy I'm producing- these units are confusing."
The objective was to create modules on our landing page in our mobile app and web app to address these confusions.
energy usage
production vs consumption graphs
"I don't understand how much of my home energy needs my solar production covers- why am I still paying a utility bill?"
Let's help with that.
To address the confusion, I created a graph breakdown of their total energy usage. Homeowners can clearly see the total amount of energy they used each day and how much of that energy was covered by their solar production (blue) vs supplemented by the grid (magenta).
The time scale I used was a month because homeowners' utility bills are billed on a monthly cycle.
This is a quick visual way for users to understand the proportion of their energy that their solar production covered. If their home needs aren't completely covered by their solar production (which is usually the case-the above graph is the average homeowner's production/consumption data) they can see that they still had to pull energy form the grid.
This explains why they still have a utility bill.
mobile data touch
solar education
energy equivalents
"I don't understand how much solar energy I'm producing- these units are confusing."
Now let's tackle this.
'kWh' is an intangible unit for most people. It's a unit of energy that measures electricity over time, but what does that mean?
The goal of this module was to equate a user's year to date solar production to energy equivalents that they could both understand and feel good about.
I wanted to bolster enthusiasm around this total increasing and inform users on the positive impact they were having on the environment by displaying environmental energy equivalents. I landed on the 4 units above based on competitor analysis and internal user research.
mobile scroll
responsive screens
desktop, tablet, mobile
The 'Energy Usage' graph and 'Energy Equivalents' module are displayed at the bottom of the landing page.
desktop
tablet
mobile
learnings
how I grew
Data visualization: Both of these modules required me to have a strong grasp of the production and consumption data we have for our homeowners. I grew in my ability to re-imagine this numerical data into graphics that are easier to digest for our average user.
User empathy: As someone who has worked in the solar industry for years, I understand this data and the unit of measurements. I had to practice user empathy, putting myself in the shoes of someone who has never come across this type of information before and designing to educate and inform them about their individual production and consumption information.