A web-based internal dashboard streamlining access to complex data, decreasing users’ manual tasks by 75% and reducing required work time for daily tasks.

About Uplight

Uplight is a SaaS company focusing on driving a sustainable future by partnering with energy providers and offering various solutions ranging from energy efficiency to demand response (DR) management.

What is Demand Response?

Demand Response (DR) happens when energy consumers modify their consumption patterns during peak usage hours or in response to grid instability (e.g. pre-cool a home before demand for energy peaks, and then nudge the thermostat up a few degrees during hours of high demand). This process is vital for maintaining grid reliability and efficiency.

-project background-

The need for a dashboard starts here

Before a DR event occurs, it needs to undergo a lengthy process of creation and evaluation to ensure everything runs seamlessly. This process involves multiple internal stakeholders and currently relies on Slack to coordinate and monitor events with the end goal of ensuring that necessary steps are executed successfully. However, this approach has its limitations…

Stakeholders & users

*note* there are more stakeholders involved in a successful DR event, but due to time and technical constraints, we decided to focus solely on those involved in the ‘pre-event’ process for the MVP.

Problem

In the business lens, the existing process poses scalability challenges, especially considering the constraints, with time efficiency being a main factor. This is due to the amount of time it takes to complete the current process for a successful event.

From the user's perspective, the current method of event observability through Slack has drawbacks. The channel often gets overloaded with information, making it challenging for stakeholders to track events effectively. Additionally, there are a lot of manual steps, such as cross-referencing data with different programs, that lengthen the process.

Project goals

Improve event visibility and tracking

Reduce the amount of manual tasks required

How? By centralizing event info in one platform, where info is easy to scan and digestible to users

-problem discovery-

Let’s find out— Stakeholder interviews

Since each stakeholder has a vastly different focus area within the DR process, we conducted stakeholder interviews to cover topics such as current processes, pain points, and future use cases. This information not only helped us better understand stakeholders and their role, but also informed design sprint planning.

TURNING

POINT

Successful DR events involve multiple steps including pre- to post-event processes. Initially, the dashboard was intended to focus solely on the ‘pre-event’ steps. However, stakeholder interviews uncovered the need of a more comprehensive dashboard.

At this point the dashboard evolved, now being inclusive of event lifecycle as a whole. However, due to time and technical constraints, the MVP focused only on the pre-event processes.

-solutioning-

Design sprints— finding solutions ASAP!

We chose to follow a modified version Google Venture’s Design Sprint due to time constraints. The design sprint involved a representative from each stakeholder group to ensure that all voices were heard in a collaborative environment.

DAY 1

Made sure we really understood stakeholder’s process by reviewing ‘current process’ flowchart mapped with stakeholder frustrations. After confirming painpoints, created main How Might We (HMW) statements to focus on for the rest of the sprint.

DAY 2

After looking for inspiration in other digital solutions, participants sketched and voted on the features that would solve the HMW statements. This informed a list of requirements for the dashboard.

DAY 3

Created mid-fidelity wireframes based on the requirement list from the second day and conducted synchronous usability tests to get user feedback early on.

-testing-

Usability testing

Conducted a second round of usability tests with updated design from design sprint’s usability findings.

Synthesized findings through affinity mapping and made insights actionable by prioritizing features and functionalities through a tier list based on feature importance to users and technical feasibility.

New designs = Increased time efficency!

Informed by the tier list, I updated the design. This new version optimized the dashboard to reduce even more manual tasks and improve dashboard onboarding by working on making features and functionalities more intuitive.

Post-usability1 2.jpg
Post-usability2 2.jpg

-final design-

Uplight-ifying the design

To finalize the MVP, a design system review session was done. This session consisted of a comprehensive review of navigation hierarchy, list view improvements, and general UI enhancements to align the visuals with the rest of Uplight’s products.

Technical feasibility changes

Conducted a last MVP check-in with engineering. At this time, certain features were taken out of the picture such as calendar view and event overview tab in the main navigation. To keep us centered in the purpose of the dashboard, these tabs are still included in the prototype (yet will not be included in the launched product).

Project impact!

  • By showing real-time event evaluation step status, Ops and Account Managers no longer need to go through endless Slack threads to find out event status.

    Additionally, highlighting event evaluation stats eliminates the need to cross-reference other platforms to ensure accuracy.

  • Thanks to icons, banners, and code links, we were able to provide a way to identify and solve problems faster. For engineering, this means saving more than 30 minutes per incident hunting for event logs by surfacing relevant code right away.

  • More manual tasks = more probability for human errors to occur. We found that reducing manual tasks required led to decreased chances of making unwanted mistakes.

  • All impacts mentioned above led to less stress and freed up mental capacity that would otherwise be used in manual tasks, enabling focus for more important tasks and increasing efficiency.

-next steps-

Going beyond MVP

  • As mentioned in the beginning of the case study, and despite the MVP only focusing on the pre-event processes, this dashboard is set to solve for the event lifecycle as a whole. Throughout this project, I kept track of features that fell outside of the MVP version in Miro. After launching the current version, the next step would be to collect launched design feedback and revisit MVP+ requirement list to inform the next research plan.

  • Currently, events can only be viewed as a list of the present day. If a user wants to view a past or future event, they’d need to skip through every single day. Based on research findings, a calendar view would improve historical observability leading to more time efficiency.

  • Having stats for the overall season would help stakeholders complete seasonal performance analysis, which is a very tedious task at the moment.

Takeaways

Communicating effectively

At Uplight, I honed my ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams by tailoring conversations to their needs. I learned how asking upfront about their priorities made discussions smoother and more effective.

Embracing blank space

This project taught me the power of blank space in making complex data more digestible. By embracing empty spaces, I learned to highlight key information and reduce information overload in data-heavy designs.

Embracing blank space

This experience definitely upped my Figma game! I can now confidently say that I am a more efficient designer, by building the habit of designing with auto-layout, components, and lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts.