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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Philip

Wants:
To realize the best price himself.
Start trading immediately and no administrative hassle afterward.
Performance stays up to par.

Service Blueprint

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.

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:

1.   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 RETENTION