Nuon Energy N.V.
Part of the European Vattenfall produces and supplies electricity,
energy-related products, and services, gas, heat, and cold.
Nuon strives for fossil-free energy supply within one generation;
clean, reliable, and affordable.
2017 was the year of a pre-announcement to be taken over by Vattenfall.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated
confidential information in this case study. The information in this case study is my own
and does not necessarily reflect the views of Nuon/ Vattenfall
MY ROLE
I led the UX design of Nuon/ Vattenfall across iOS, Android,
Desktop and Web since the outset of the project in May 2017.
Up until May 2018, I led efforts to evolve the service and address customer
pain points related to the browse and discovery experience.
Customer Insights & Ideation
I worked inside with three project managers and one other UX designer to uncover insights and translate concepts into features that address customer behaviors and motivations.
Experience Strategy & Vision
I created frameworks and prototypes to share the vision, design principles, and content strategy. This helped to evangelize ideas, gain alignment and drive decision making.
Planning & Scope Definition
I defined products with the product owners. I evangelized customer goals and balanced business goals. I prioritized and negotiated features for launch and beyond.
Oversight & Coordination
I designed across and collaborated with eight platform project managers and their product owners to translate product features for each platform context.
Design Execution & Validation
I designed it down on Android, iOS, and the iOS mobile NHP Nuon’s Handel Platform. I executed journeys, wireframes, prototypes, and design specs.
Leadership
I designed up and presented works to gain buy‐in from executives, senior stakeholders, and many other Nuon teams throughout the project lifecycle.
THE CHALLENGE
A CONSISITENT UX IN ALL THE bTb APPLICATIONS
For some time now sales have declined and now a sizable proportion of the energy industry’s revenue is made by price. For Nuon/ Vattenfall, this signaled a rapid change in energy consumption habits.
Our challenge was to evolve with customers and enter the highly competitive price market.
More customer-centered experience and usability is what Nuon wants to see in their applications voor business to business. With this new benefit, they hoped to create deeper relationships with Nuon customers.
APPROACH
Setting up a UX strategy for BtB
First I sat down with three product owners, three developers to fill in this poster about the UX strategy. Later on, I pinned it on the board in the developer’s corner. During this “workshop” I got some insights too:
The commodity market in which Nuon operates is highly standardized with little differentiation.
Competition in the large business segment is fierce and increasing: new competitors and new propositions.
There is a creation of business comparison sites
Competitors are active in offering digital (self) service.
First large corporate competitors are active in digital commodity sales.
(New) competitors operate with a very low-cost structure.
High pressure on the pricing of our commodity product.
Principles
The core user experience attributes we seek to deliver with our products and services became:
Welcoming.
Confident.
Meaningful.
Delightful.
Design approach
On an actual business challenge to solve.
Co-creation and facilitation
User-centered innovation
Customer journey and user scenarios
Testing and refining the CX
Co-creation and organizational design for customer-focused innovation
Ideation workshop
Design Thinking
Measure the “as is”
- KPI’s for processes, lead times, times of contact with customers
measure employee engagement (Performance culture scan) - Customer research to determine if we reach our goal of making customers feel climate power living.
Design thinking
Meet customer demands
- Get closer to customers ( Service Agents, sales already have contact with customers)
- Employees who don’t have contact should shadow their colleagues who do.
- Design thinking forces you to constantly check if a change you are considering fulfills the customer’s needs.
Method for strategy design
- Creating something your customer wants, while at the same time adhering to the demands of the outside world.
- You have to constantly check your assumptions and whether or not your product matches the customer’s needs. That’s why the method is not only suitable for strategy design, but also innovation and scenario planning.
Chasing Waterfalls
Feature design and development were broken into parallel workstreams. I led the design for all aspects related to BtB applications.
Each feature phase of the project was serialized, starting with the design and development for the reference platform—Nuon’s Self Service. Once each feature was designed and approved, the engineering team began the implementation.
I followed by working with platform developers to translate product features for their platform’s context. Concurrently, I would design the next feature in the pipeline, whilst also working with my platform engineering teams to execute the current feature through to completion.
________
“The combination of a fixed launch date and aggressive scope created an intense environment with many coordination and time challenges.”
________
The design was submerged into an engineering-driven approach as a result of working backward from definite launch date. Engineering estimations drove signoff milestones, and the time left over was used to build the proper design. The combination of a set launch date and a broad scope resulted in a high-pressure atmosphere with numerous coordination and timing constraints.
The Discovery
Customer insights
Customer and market research had already been executed by customer journey managers and outside consultancies.
These are the key insights of the 3 personas we worked with.
Persona 1
Wants:
Efficient use of energy.
Best price.
Make choice online in the shortest time.
Conformation to make the right choice.
Persona 2
Wants:
Insight and control over energy management.
Predictable total energy costs and preferably realized under budget.
Meet sustainable goals.
Want to keep the administration in order.
Overview/insight into Users in my organization; connections; Billing setup.
Purchasing the energy within the set budget.
Persona 3
Wants:
To realize the best price himself.
Start trading immediately and no administrative hassle afterward.
Performance stays up to par.
Vision
Welcoming, Confident, Meaningful, and Delightful
Welcoming
Our experiences are friendly and inviting. We keep them straightforward so our users can easily get started.
Confident
Our experiences guide our users in moving
through information to complete their goals.
We create intuitive navigation through clear metaphors and actionable cues.
Meaningful
Our experiences generate value for our users. We make our users smarter and more productive by giving them the means to discover new insights and efficiencies.
Delightful
Our experiences thrill our users by exceeding their expectations. We innovate for our users to live our brand and differentiate.
The self service
INTRODUCING SELF SERVICE
Self Service application for tablet, when on the job.
As an organization to be able to control energy costs,
energy business and be able to get things done and get insights in:
Nuons Trade platform NPH
Managing vacant properties
Connections
Contracts
Invoice
Usage management
Shoes the usage of the energy on all locations.
NHP Nuons Trade Platform
As it says, the trading platform, to trade in energy.
Managing vacant properties
Be able to turn off and on the energy flow yourself when for a period when the properties are empty.
CONTRACTS
All the contracts in one sight.
Invoices
Overview/insight into: Users in my organization; connections; Billing setup
The framework
HOW WE GOT THERE
The most difficult aspect of this project for me was balancing moving forward
with designs while collaborating with the rest of the team.
I needed to cooperate with the development team,
as well as product managers and owners, and gain their approval.
Managing feedback was much more difficult because
it felt like a pendulum of opinions was swinging back and forth.
When there was no data that could easily be acquired to help drive a choice,
the team spent an excessive amount of time debating design decisions.
Agony, paralysis, and a rising mistrust for instincts in the design process were the result.
______
Managing feedback was much more difficult because it felt like a pendulum
of opinions was swinging back and forth.
______
Early on in the project, I saw this pattern and spent time documenting it to help ease the data crutch and better communicate and distribute design logic. This took some time up frontupfront, but it saved a lot of back and forth as the project went.
Design principles and the content prioritization structure aided in bringing my decision-making process into the open and rallying the team around the idea.
The digital experience principles are based upon what our clients want to experience and what we believe to promise our customers. We use the customer insights we gathered and customer journeys we’ve developed to create with these principles relevant and useful and helpful experiences.
These principles help design the user’s usability of interface and interaction as part of the whole user experience.
Digital design principles
Setting up the BtB usability guidelines
With a little help from experts from the field, I set up the BtB guidelines.
Besides the general guidelines explicit for Nuon:
- Demonstrate How You Solve Your Prospects’ Problems
2. Make your Product Pages Compelling
3. Pricing Information
4. Show How You’ve Solved Customer Problems in the Past
5. Keeping your Customers Engaged
6. Collaborative Purchasing and Sharing Options with Colleagues
7. Building a Relationship
8. Special Customer Sectors: Events, Public, and International
9. Mobile and Tablet
10. Facilitating BTB of BTC Websites
Design Style Guide
New icons, color buttons were added to the existing stylebook from the website.
Besides this big project Self Service I managed to do a few projects more:
ONLINE MARKETING
More conversion:
Website analysis by doing A/B tests for more conversion and visits
- Funnel design
- Bannerdesign
- Landingpages
- A/B tests
- Onboarding
ONLINE SALES
To be able to get a contract online.
- Request quotation with calculation
ONLINE RETENTION
To be able to keep customers
- The app lets customers be able to compile different products online
- Customers can see de price of the compilation
ONLINE SALES
For clients to be able to buy online. Compile your products.
Instead of doing this as several assignments, I chose a full-time contract of one year. Being at the location, working agile was one of the reasons. Although the time wasn’t that long, I found the time to do a little extra, like learning colleagues how to prototype a monthly digital report app and an idea on how to store solar energy and re-use the energy to warm your house and water supply.