Peak Power

Accessible Energy Dashboard Redesign

Role: UX Designer | Timeline: 6 months | Platform: Web + Mobile | Team: PM ×4, Dev ×6, UX ×2

Summary & Key Impact

Reduced user confusion in key workflows, cutting related support tickets by ~40% post-launch.
Improved accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA), enabling inclusive use for color-blind and low-vision users.
Introduced data-driven automation for energy storage management, reducing manual decision-making time by 60%.
Simplified complex energy data into clear, actionable insights for diverse facility teams.

1. The Challenge

The existing smart energy management platform had:

Complex UI with unclear hierarchy.
Manual, error-prone battery charge/discharge workflows.
Poor accessibility for users with color vision deficiencies.

Business goal: Improve usability, reduce support requests, and meet accessibility standards.

2. My Role

Led end-to-end redesign from discovery to post-launch iteration.
Conducted 12 stakeholder interviews (facility managers & energy experts).
Analyzed 50+ support tickets to identify recurring pain points.
Worked closely with PM & developers to ensure feasibility and business alignment.
Supported multiple release cycles with ongoing design adjustments.

3. Research Insights

Methods:

In-depth interviews
Workflow observation
Support ticket analysis

Key Findings:

Users lacked confidence in when to charge/discharge batteries due to unclear pricing signals.
Data presentation was dense, non-intuitive, and not actionable.
Accessibility gaps excluded part of the user base.

When conducting in-depth interviews with commercial office building managers and energy management experts, the focus is primarily on the following aspects:

1. Business Needs and Challenges:
- Understanding their key concerns in energy usage and efficiency, such as high energy costs, energy wastage, and peak usage periods.
- Exploring their current energy monitoring and management practices to identify any inefficiencies or gaps in information.

2. User Expectations and Requirements:
- Investigating the desired features and capabilities for a new data analytics tool, such as real-time data monitoring, predictive analysis, and customizable reporting.
- Determining specific issues they expect the new tool to address, such as improving energy efficiency or reducing costs.

3. User Interface Usage Patterns:
- Observing how they interact with the user interface of existing energy data analytics tools, including methods for viewing real-time data, setting parameters, and generating reports.

Strategy & Design Approach

Goals

Automate decision-making with real-time data triggers.
Present complex battery + pricing data as visual, actionable summaries.
Apply inclusive design principles for all visual elements.

1/2

Process (6 months):

Months 1–2: Research & affinity mapping to prioritize needs.
Months 3–4: Task flows, lo-fi sketches, iterative prototypes.
Month 5: Hi-fi design, accessibility audit, and developer handoff.
Month 6: Usability testing, refinement, and launch.

Persona

To help communicate information about users that I collected during research, I created a provisional persona.

Ideate

Task Flow

I created task flows for steps a user typically goes through in order to complete two common tasks in PeakPowe:

User charges or discharges the ESS (energy storage system)

User charges or discharges the V2G (vehicle to grid) system)

To better understand where in the process users were having trouble, I highlighted the areas in orange where most users struggled, where I want to focus most during the redesign.

Lo-Fi Sketches

Based on the established pair points, I sketched multiple options to test and see how by initiating minimal changes to optimize the user experience. During the process of redesign, I continued referring to the target audience, company mission, revenue model and my goal to focus on how to improve the user experience rather than making design changes. After a few rounds of iterations I came to a good place with the solutions.

1/2

PROTOTYPE

Hi-Fi Prototype

Moving forward with process, I turned my Lo-Fi sketches into Hi-Fi prototype. Below are the screen comparison showing before and after side by side.

Peak Power Report App

Reports are categorized by hour, day and week.

HMI

Use HMIs to monitor machinery to make sure it's working properly.

VALIDATE

Before

After

Conclusion

After two weeks of user research, analysis and redesign, I was able to validate the assumptions and changes I had made. I did this by testing my clickable prototype with even new users. The results are:

Looking for building status: 7 out of 7 users found it on the home screen in 5 seconds.
Graphs: 7 out of 7 users can understand the content.
Electricity market prices: 6 out of 7 users were able to find it quickly.
Automated charging and discharging: 7 out of 7 users were able to select easily.
SoC(State of charge) status: 6 out of 7 users said showing soc1, soc2 was very helpful.

Notes: For future studies, I would like to spend more time collecting data on how often users call operators and how often users update default settings. Also, how is this received from the business side.

After Thoughts

This project has been a challenging and rewarding experience for me. At the beginning, I was overwhelmed by the idea of having to talk to experienced managers for usability testing. However, it turned out to be an amazing experience to understand users and find out what makes them tick.

Although I had a very short timeline for this project, I am glad to learn that even by making small changes, we are able to yield big impacts and create a great experience for users. It is so important to always validate our assumptions through testing.