Public Charging Company

User Experience Case Study

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

A user experience design for a new Electric Vehicle (EV) public charging company

MY ROLE

I am the user experience designer in this project. I conducted the design process and aligned the user needs with the business goals.

Design Thinking

I used the Design Thinking Methodology and the design was iterated during this process.

01

EMPATHY

Quantitative Research
Qualitative Research
Competitive Analysis

02

DEFINE

Affinity Diagram
Persona
Empathy Map
Customer Journey Map
Problem Statement

03

IDEATE

Brainstorming
Sketching
User Flow

04

PROTOTYPE

Wireframe
Wireflow

05

TEST

Moderated Usability Testing
Product Analytics

01 EMPATHY

The goal is to understand user habits, needs, and pain points by putting ourselves in the user’s shoes. I tried to gather as much data as I could.

Quantitative Research

Obtained quantitative data from trusted organizations.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The Brattle Group
EY-Eurelectric
European Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Master Plan
EY-Eurelectric
Volvo
Freewire White Paper, Driving EV Adoption, April 2022
Ergon Energy Network and Energex White Paper
Sabanci University, Türkiye Elektrikli Araçlar Görünümü report 2021

Qualitative Research

EV users are interviewed.

Some of the semi-structured interview questions and answers.

Read user reviews from the blogs.

Watched vlogs regarding EV charging experience.

Read user reviews of current experiences from the App store.

Competitive Analysis

Analyzed four different companies' EV charging experience.

Key Insights

I gathered useful information from the process. Here are some key findings.

Around 65% of users have range anxiety. Range anxiety refers to the concern about the distance an EV will run.
Users have time anxiety.
- Users intend to charge their EVs as quickly as possible.
- Having to wait for another driver if there is not an empty slot.
Users have charge anxiety.
- EV users have concerns about finding a charging station nearby.
- When they find it, how will they manage to finish the process?
3,4 Level 3 and 40 Level 2 charging stations are needed per 1.000 EVs
Nearly 2 million public chargers will need to be installed until 2030.
Until 2035, 85% of chargers will be installed in residential areas and 4 percent on public highways.
Users prefer fast (DC) public chargers but they are expensive.

02 DEFINE

The data collected in the first phase is analyzed, and used to create a problem definition.

Affinity Diagram

I combined all the quantitative and qualitative data together, clustered similar information.

Persona

Who is our user? It kept us on the track!

Empathy Map

Observations from the interview is visualized.

Customer Journey Map

Let’s jump in the user's shoes, feel the scenario. The customer journey map shows the relationship between the user and the app over time and across all channels.

Problem Statement

With all findings and data, it is time to create a problem statement.

People who are using electric vehicles need a charging experience because they want to access to closest charge stations easily, and charge as fast as possible.

03 IDEATE

In the ideate phase, we generated as many ideas as we could. Solutions are filtered into the most practical and most effective ones.

Brainstorm

Problems are cut into pieces and prioritized. "How Might We" questions are asked with the team to find solutions.

Sketching Ideas

Solutions are proposed via sketching, best solutions are selected.

User Flow

Approaching the scenario logically. Flow for accomplishing tasks.

04 PROTOTYPE

I turned the abstract sketched solutions into wireframes for a tangible experience.

Wireframes

Conceptual models are wireframed

Wireflows

Let's look at some tasks and problems and see how I addressed them into solutions.

Task 1

Users have charge anxiety. EV users have concerns about finding a charging station nearby when needed.

Task 2

Users have time anxiety. They intend to charge their EVs as quickly as possible. We can not solve the problem completely but we can reduce the anxiety by reserving the station. Charging speed is related to the charging technology.

Task 3

Around 65% of users have range anxiety. Range anxiety refers to the concern about the distance an EV will run. Range anxiety is dependent on battery technology. We can reduce anxiety with route planning features.

05 TEST

The design has to be tested to see if there is a gap between the conceptual model and the mental model.

Moderated Usability Test

I conducted face to face and remote usability tests. I focused on both objective and subjective metrics.

Objective Metrics

Time on tasks
Number of taps effort
Number of confusions
Number of errors
Success rate
Failure rate

Subjective Metrics

When are the users stressed?
When are the users confused?
Are they satisfied with the app?
Were the tasks difficult?
How does the interface look?
The general opinion about the app.

Test Results

According to the test results 2 major confusions are detected.

Unavailable, busy stations are misunderstood
Instant charging is confused with reservation

Collect Analytics From the Product

As the product is on the market, data is collected and analyzed. According to the results design is iterated.

SOLUTION

A mobile app where users can find chargers nearby and complete charging tasks smoothly.

Roadmap

How will the project proceed?

Success Measurement

After understanding the customer’s business goals, we set KPIs. If these KPIs are fulfilled in the first year then we will consider the design was successful.

KPIs are based on Google’s HEART framework.

Conclusion

We aimed for a good enough design for the current phase of the project. After collecting data from real users we will enhance the design by adding or removing features.

Chicken-egg situation

In order to provide cheaper charging experience more EVs are needed. On the other hand to increase the number of EVs more stations are needed.

Solving all the problems?

Some problems are solved with the user experience but some of them are dependant to other factors. Range anxiety is related to battery technology. Even if we did not solve the problem completely we reduced this anxiety by creating the route planner feature in our experience.

Heatmap for station infrastructure

Once the system is live, EV network data will be collected and stations will be placed in the optimum locations.