Lectrium provides a fully managed service that combines standard pricing, certified electrician services, and smart time management into a single, stress-free charger installation experience.
This project will focus entirely on the homeowner who is filling out our survey and getting an EV charger installed at their home. Currently homeowners only fill out a survey and we then send them an email with more detail. Instead they wanted to go from survey, to estimate, to scheduling, to payment, to confirmations - all on their web platform.
EV owners and prospective owners needs an efficient way to arrange installation and payment for their residential chargers, so that they can charge their electric vehicles at their own convenience.
Create an intuitive installation booking process by implementing a post survey flow.
This project was taken to a hi-fidelity prototype stage where I could perform user testing and iterate on the key issues that users were finding.
In the video, you will see a walkthrough of a how a customer would use this post survey flow on their desktop.
In this video, you will see a the same walkthrough of the customer flow as above, but on a mobile device.
We first took a deep dive into Lectrium’s existing operations and back-end processes to determine the existing customer flow.
Currently, the prospective customer completes a survey in order to check eligibility and get an estimate of the service cost. The results are calculated by Lectrium and an email is sent using the email address provided to tell them if they are eligible for the service and how much it may cost. A back-and-forth of emails, phone calls, and site visits happen for several days before Lectrium is able to receive any payment. During the breaks in this flow Lectrium is experiencing high drop off rates after spending up to 6 hrs on labor already.
Our scope was between these two dividing dashed lines in the flow above. The business needed a way to onboard, schedule, and lock in customers quickly, while still creating an enjoyable customer experience.
We first conducted a competitive and comparative analysis with 2 of Lectrium's key competitors, and a bathroom remodeling company that uses a similar model.
Qmerit includes an overview page with the survey steps that we felt was very useful and they also had descriptive illustrations for each step you were filling out. Egg includes a progress bar that is helpful to track the steps throughout the process and go back and change things. They also have a quick eligibility survey that is similar to Lectrium's newest one. Made has pleasing visuals and a thorough questionnaire that seemed to streamline the booking process. They each had features that we thought we could incorporate into our flow, including a progress bar, chat box, and tool tips.
We then developed and sent out a user survey to help inform our design.
Some of the key findings from the survey included, the importance of cost transparency of the charger and installation, followed by the clarity of the information provided about the service while scheduling. We found that Videos, and written instructions were the most preferred methods for learning about EV chargers and installation. Finally, from the survey and from Lectrium's own research we were able to see that both desktop and mobile would be important for this service.
From our 8 user interviews, we affinity mapped all of results to figure out what were the most common pieces of information that users were saying. Trust, Cost transparency, saving money on gas, accurate scheduling throughout their process, step by step breakdowns of the process were all user statements they kept coming up in the interviews that were important to incorporate.
“I get a lot of emails every day, so it would have been nice to have an order number and then a status check on the website, to see like when the appointment would be and also keeping track of the messages in the history rather than just going through an email chain.”
We then interviewed and conducted surveys with existing Lectrium customers. Of the 3 respondents, there was a consistent message about having an orderly and systematic process to follow and a sense of trusting Lectrium to handle everything.
To round off the research phase, we created an empathy map in order to establish common ground among team members and to understand and prioritize user needs.
Once we had conducted the enough user research we we were able to define the problem and come up with the best solution to solve it.
Below, we created to 2 of the main personas that were important to visualize from information provided by Lectriums marketing research. Persona 1 Angela, is purchasing an EV or has one and is looking to set up at-home charging. Persona, George, is interested and exploring EV and curious to learn more.
“EV saves a lot of money on gas and is good for the environment”
“I don’t know much about EVs but I know they are the future”
We decided to create a service blueprint to show the different services that need to happen to understand the way the business will need to operate in order to support the automated flow.
Across the top in grey you have the the customer user flow, under that in dark blue the front-end tasks that the user will have to complete. The light blue shows the back-end tasks in the company to make the front-end work, and the white shows the back-end's supporting processes. We are focusing on the flow between the 2 dashed lines, however the tasks outside the flow needed to be considered as well.
In the video we have the Lectrium installation estimate survey, which is currently on their website now.
Using the persona above, Angela would need to answer a few questions about her home regarding her garage, electric panel location, and upload photos that would help the installer.
After the survey is complete, is where our post survey flow starts.
My team and I went through a few low-fidelity sketch rounds, before combined elements for our mid-fidelity wire flow that is shown in the video.
After the survey, Angela will reach the order summary page where she'll pick a service plan plan. She'll then set up an account to track her progress and select a date and time to schedule her installation appointment. Then she'll have the option to upload any additional photos that would help with the installation quote. Finally, she'll proceed to entering her payment info to finalize her booking request.
Journey map version A (below) is our proposed flow from the service blueprint, with some user quotes below pulled from our A/B usability testing.
The flow itself seemed pretty normal to users, but instead we discovered that there were confusion within the information itself on the pages. Users were unclear on the differences in the service plan options, or they didn't find it necessary to create an account. Another confusion was realizing that the scheduling is only a request at this point due to client back-end reasons. Finally, users weren't sure what extra photos they would need to upload and suggested that maybe having an additional comments section for information about their home or property would be useful.
In journey map version B, our client and stakeholders wanted to see how the user would react to entering in the payment right after proceeding with their estimate, in order to secure their booking.
This change in payment location caused a drastic drop in the emotional experience during payment and scheduling, because users are confused why they are paying before confirming there was availability.
Based off the information provided in our A/B user testing, as well as client and stakeholder feedback, were were able to rethink the user flow in a way that brought the scheduling before the payment, but still locked in the customer before Lectrium spent more time getting the installer involved.
Within our updated user flow above, you will see breaks where Lectrium will need to do some back-end work including, checking that the information provided is sufficient and connecting with installers in the local site area. This improved user flow gives our client the ability to perform their back-end work and also helps eliminate some confusion for our users.
We then wanted to implement these changes into a high-fidelity prototype and began another round of usability tests.
During the 12 usability tests, the user success rate was high, but thier was still confusion about the amount of steps left in the process during a break, and the cost transparency when they were inputting their payment information early on.
“There were moments the email would have me log back in to review the summary when the summary could just be in the email body like a phone bill receipt or online shopping receipt.”
"It threw me off that I gave my credit card information, but I wasn't paying for anything and then I didn't have to give my credit card information at the end when I was finally confirming payment.”
"I was thrown off by supplying all my payment info prior the final price. I'd rather know all that before I hand over my credit card info."
Based off the usability testing, we updated the user flow again. The the initial estimate no longer includes 3 service plan options to reduce price confusion. Instead you are presented your best option based on the survey, and a product that you have chosen during the survey.
The other main change in the flow, was the addition of order summary pages before each break. This allows users get an understanding of their estimated price at that phase of the process, and see how many steps they have left to complete.
As the flow was starting to work for the business and the users, we created a mobile prototype to test on. Below you will see some of the quantitative data taken during the testing.
The responsive mobile design had a great success. The time taken to complete the task went up, but the overall confusion was decreased by adding a few more steps to the flow, ultimately making it smoother and more intuitive.
Below you can access both desktop and mobile prototypes to click through.
In this video, you will see a walkthrough of the final version of this prototype, and how a customer would use this post survey flow on their desktop.
In this video, you will see a the same walkthrough of the customer flow as above, but on a mobile device.
The main discoveries that I found to be important in this project were that UX writing must be clear and detailed to avoid confusion in the flow. Utilizing strong UX writing to provide regular updates on their progress comforts the user by knowing where they are in the flow and how much is left.
Another discovery found was the that because the flow was asynchronous when Lectrium needed to do backend processes, the importance of allowing the flow to continue on multiple devices increased. Thinking about how and when a user accesses the flow throughout their day is important in any design.
If I were to continue on with this project the immediate next steps would be:
• Design additional screens for sign-on (Google, Facebook, Twitter).
• Creating a review section for customers to read and make an informed decision on installers, as well as leave comments and ratings.
• A/B testing on alternate “Edit” style e.g. text or icons. Implement a feature to edit on the current page, without going back in the flow.
• Update progress bar and determine which segments of progress bar are clickable.
