The Grid

The Grid is a energy-efficient battery storage system product ready to change the future in enduring blackouts. I was responsible in branding the look and feel of the product. I also managed the design team and worked with stakeholders to create a better overall experience.

Role

Creative Director
Visual Design
Brand Identity
Producer
Interaction Design/ Data Visualization

Tools

Adobe Suite
Videography
Figma
Google

Telling a compelling story

The mission was to build energy-efficient homes. I created a product for our audience to save on incentives and save on their energy bill. The challenge was creating a powerful brand identity, one that stemmed from the idea of choosing clean energy and preventing a home power outage. I conducted research to understand our users to better focus on the personality of the brand.

Goal

collaborated closely with stakeholders, I brought clarity to the vision, developed a strategy and establish a visual identity, transform a rough idea into a brand identity, and a useful product. My role in the design process involved conducting research and leading the creative direction across some key achievements of which I have listed below:

Conducting Research: Conducted stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis to identify users’ interest and pain points in the energy efficiency market.
Establishing Features & Design Strategy: Structured the creative direction of the branding and design system to better address the user’s pain points and desires through branding, motion, interface, and web design.
Telling a Compelling Story: Highlighted product features relevant to targeted consumers through varies design collateral (videography, visual design, Interaction design).
Ongoing Usability Testing: Supported our B2B partners in the ongoing creative approach by improving our data visualizations, interaction and branded material.

Scope

Understanding the company’s corporate identity, I built the brand identity and design system that reflected the balanced needs and goals of both the brand and product. I also created a new visual element that would better represent the product as clean, energy efficient, and easy to use.

Drafting & Presenting Concepts

Combination of Power & Clean

Finalizing Logo

Smart Home Interactive Experience

I created a interactive data visualization touch display that showed essential information on users’ home energy spending and how it complied with California’s Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards at the touch of a screen. Combining data and information. Collaborating with the R&D team, the design of the UI presents our batteries + solar packages for one of our partners home expo.

Shaping Dual-Market Products & Leading Creative Projects

Tasked with redefining experiences for B2B and enterprise, I partnered closely with clients to integrate their feedback, significantly boosting our products' usability and desirability. As Creative Director, I subsequently led multiple creative projects, notably co-directing and producing a video that captured the groundbreaking evolution of our solar battery and its impact on modern home energy.

Process

The Problem

To focus on building on the consumer side of the product, I applied design thinking strategies to the process of thinking from the users’ perspective to understand how they would receive the product. The opportunities to design can be addressed through multiple pathways based on tech and grid architecture options that our battery storage serves. By describing the opportunities of our batteries' features, the ux process aims to align the system needs with the storage options best suited to fill those needs for consumers. I aim to reduce electric bills and better endure blackouts. The problems I needed to solve through the process:

‍Who are the audience: Conducting stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis to identify users’ interest and pain points in the energy efficiency market.
Our products features: Understand our users in interest and pain points in the market, I need to solve what our product can offer to the audiences. That comes from working closely with our Engineering team.

To stay on track with the project timeline, I first collected information about goals, problems, expectations, and other data that would determine exactly what the design process should encompass. I proposed two research methods, inclusive of the need for both secondary and primary research. Our primary research would be in-depth stakeholder interviews and observational inquiry that would allow us to understand B2B and B2C user pathways.

Research goals:

Understand business stakeholders’ product and design pain points.
Identifying and solving customer challenges with the highest brilliant solutions.
Gain firsthand insights into the product from our engineering team.

Research

Stakeholder Interviews

I interviewed five different stakeholders to explore variations of product development and its potential challenges. We needed to consider the types of problems the product will attempt to solve and how end users will benefit. I knew that part of my discovery had to include users. After talking to them about some of their challenges and describing some of the tools we could use to help, stakeholders warmed up to the idea of including audiences in the process.

Interview goals:

Gain a better understanding of the problem, understanding the stakeholders' experiences and challenges in their line of product development.
Informing stakeholders of audience insights during the interview, I mentioned who the product should focus on and why. Educating the stakeholders about who the audience should be for the product and how best to attract users.
Defining product success. Understand how we can achieve success from our business goal side.

Interview Findings

Overall, there is considerable potential in the energy conceptualization market within the sphere of new smart homes. However, our stakeholders had some pressing challenges tied directly to the product.

Needs:

Communicating the features of the battery must be tied user's needs.
Better utilization of our efforts in both B2B and B2C, building an audience.
Ability to communicate and reach users.

Lack of an information hub for basic product information.
Structuring a timeline for the product release, as well as long-term and short-term activities, so that efforts can be allocated efficiently.

Competitive Analysis

Conducting a comparative analysis allows us to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of similar products and form strategies in response. We identified a suite of technologies and solutions that offer the potential to fulfill renewable energy storage. Other energy storage technologies, such as Tesla's Powerwall, deliver similar services that would ultimately compete in the same marketplace. We sought to find the differences that would give us the competitive edge.

Comparing our products features to our competitors

Understand incentives in every state in the United States and how we can reach audiences

Potential applications, competitors’ “technology options” that can provide user experience knowledge.

Team Collaboration

Although the team members have varying areas of expertise, we shared similar goals, resources, and leadership. As a group, our engineers explained the mechanism of our product to the design team. This insight gave the design team more information to better define the product’s features as relevant to the customers.

I worked closely with the R&D team to explore variations of a new concept and its potential factors. It was important to consider the types of problems the product will attempt to solve and how end users will benefit from having it.

Some key product features I had to consider based on our research was:

Factor 1: Modern Look: The idea was to stay away from the locker look, similar to some of our competitors like Sonnen.
Factor 2: Low Profile Enclosure: keeping everything in one space
Factor 3 Entire System: Consider the space for converters and inverters on the wall

Discovery

Building Personas

Based on the interviews, I wanted our target audience to reflect our business goals. This exercise was invaluable for the team: it generated creative engagement and helped them understand who they were talking to daily. We contextualize the target audiences and how potential technology could meet their needs and goals to develop a representative persona. Formed strictly from my research and interview quotes, I synthesized three key focus personas.

Builder Mark George: Builders are business partners and investors looking to stay in code with California's new energy standards. They include companies building new homes.

Installer James: Installers are independent contractors, companies looking to service new products and services in their home region.

Residential Homeowner Carissa: The homeowner is looking to save money on their electric bill or looking to incentivize their solar investments.

Exploring the personas

After analyzing the data, I synthesized the findings into manageable reference points with an empathy map. Created from interviews, personas, secondary research and competitive analysis, the empathy map contextualized future users' encounters.

Builder Mark George (B2B)

GOAL

Find new ways to stay green and find a good tax incentive.

‍PAIN POINTS

• There's a lot of paperwork that needs to be done with lawyers, safety, and the time could interrupt our release date.

• There needs to be more communication between the builder and contractors so there's no confusion about the product and energy compliance regulations.

Installer James (Enterprise)
GOALS

More products, more money for me.

PAIN POINTS

• How do I install this thing?
• Pricing is going too high for my customers. Are there any options?

Residential Homeowner Carissa (B2C)
GOALS

Reliable at the palm of my hand.

PAIN POINTS

• Is this thing as good as the Tesla Powerwall (Brand).

• How much?!

My Learning

Defining features

Our most important highlight is the signature Lithium Titanate element, the first of its kind in the battery storage system. Tested as the longest-lasting home battery with the highest power, while also being the safest and most efficient battery, VillaGrid’s battery combines the highest lifetime usable energy with the lowest lifetime cost of ownership and performs in the harshest environments.

Longest Warranty: 20-year warranty
Fire Safety: Safest Battery Chemistry
Best Value: Highest Lifetime Energy
Optimize Solar: Eligible for Incentives
Extreme Temperatures & Altitude: The Widest Operating Temperature Range
Highest Power: 2x the Charge/Discharge Power

What's the next step in our journey in delivering energy efficiency power to users?

Over the course of this project, I learned how to work within/lead a team to integrate design and business goals and articulate user needs and business impact more clearly. The project was complex because of its large budget. Identifying multiple problems and advocating for solutions was a gratifying challenge, as was the contribution my work made to my team. At times, the design team had to present the case for a more streamlined and modern experience and challenged the company's status quo of prioritizing business standards. I developed strong leadership abilities through this project. This project goes to show my potential in my leadership skills. It's a real feeling of how time and hard work can result in a revolutionary design.

Mentionship

Although I was the only designer on the team, I had the opportunity to manage a design intern in the midst of the project. She was proactive, a design thinker, and wasn't afraid to talk with other cross-functional partners. During her time, I had her work on strategies to get more proactive in our corporate identity and at the same time share some laughs.

Data Visualization

Learning the diagrammatic information design with an emphasis on improving the accessibility and usability of complex data for print and interactive media. For the interactive display, I needed to include principles of visual composition, visual perception and cognition, visual symbols, visual representations of hierarchical structures and quantitative information, interaction, and navigation in the interface design.

Collaborating with the R&D team
Data gathering, we thought of a way to present data to homeowners and see how much they would save using our product based on: Sq ft x Energy consumption x Location.

Following the digital design system
Leading my team followed the design system created for the product hierarchy.

Understanding our data & goals
‍The important aspect to the data was to understand the package of kWh and PV.