Their current business model revolves around connecting single-family home owners with electricians to install Level 2 EV chargers. Lectrium is aiming to expand their business by installing chargers in multi-family and commercial lots but encountered the issue of how these chargers would be managed. Lectrium approached our team with the task of creating a dashboard to establish this new line of business.

CLIENT

PROBLEM SPACE

There are few solutions available to control and make money off of EV chargers in commercial and multi-family residence parking lots. Lectrium approached our team with the challenge of creating a dashboard to assist property managers with an effective tool to oversee their charging stations.

GOALS & OPPORTUNITIES

• Collaborate with stakeholders
• Learn about the current state of EV charging
• Gain insight into the needs of our proposed users

• Build an intuitive and beautiful dashboard
• Refine the dashboard via user testing
• Outline next steps and an implementation strategy

INTRODUCING... THE LECTRIUM CSMS

We are proud to present the final product of our collaborative three week sprint with the Lectrium team. This web app will simplify the lives of chronically busy property managers.

Research

DESIGN CHALLENGE

The Lectrium team informed us of the need to remotely view, control, and analyze different aspects of EV charging systems in multi-car lots. It was understood that the property managers of these lots would be the administrators of the dashboard, or if there wasn't a property manager the Lectrium team would put a customer success manager up to the task. They additionally instructed us on how this new line of recurring business would benefit the Lectrium team by breaking from their current one-time installation model. This framed our design challenge as:

How can we help administrators manage their EV charging systems more effectively and give them insights into their systems usage?

USER INTERVIEWS

To fully understand the space we were designing within and the users we were designing for, we conducted user interviews. From our initial meeting with Lectirum, we learned this dashboard would be managed by a property manager or a Lectrium customer success manager so we decided to split our interviews into two rounds.

The first round of four interviews were with the Lectrium team, and the second round were with folks in property management adjacent positions.

From the Lectrium interviews, we aimed to gain better understanding from the experts in the field on what goes into EV charging management, and what the team had in mind for the build.

From the Lectrium interviews, we aimed to gain better understanding from the experts in the field on what goes into EV charging management, and what the team had in mind for the build.

From the property management interviews we aimed to gain a better understanding of existing management operations, management systems, and potential pain points.

Synthesis

To assist us in identifying the needs of our users and keep our design process as user-centric as possible, we created personified versions of our two users – Tom the Lectrium Customer Success Manager, and Zoe the Property Manager.

Tom Will Need

Zoe Will Need

• A CSMS to view and manage their property owners' chargers
• A quick and easy way to add their properties, chargers, and clients
• The ability to help clients manage their charging systems efficiently by providing high level summaries of historical data

• Customizable control of their properties, chargers, and customer types
• Large amount of data synthesized into actionable insights
• Simplified troubleshooting of time-sensitive errors

Product

Turning Insights Into Features

With user needs and insights in tow, we pivoted and began to think about which features we would prioritize for our MVP (minimum viable product). We found it helpful to break down our features by screens or flows. The five main components we needed to build were:

• Onboarding (Turns into 'Manage')
• Navigation & Sticky Features
• Overview & Live Data
• Report & Historical Data
• Lectrium Admin View

ONBOARDING (TURNS INTO 'MANAGE')

This would be the first set of screens an administrator sees after being sent a link from the Lectrium team. This will follow a linear flow the first time it is encountered. These screens can be revisited to add to or edit their properties and will not require a linear path through the screens. Here, the property manager will be able to:

• Add themselves and their colleagues as administrators
• Add the properties they oversee
• Create chargers and ports within those properties

• Set user groups
• Add users within those groups
• Create rules determining which user groups can access each port

Navigation & Sticky Features

Once a user gets through the onboarding process, they will arrive upon their dashboard. This group of features exist in the nav bar or are fixed elsewhere on the page:

• 'Manage' dropdown allowing additions or edits to properties, charger & ports, user groups, users, and access settings
• Users can toggle between 'Overview' and 'Reports' dashboard views

• Property managers can contact a Lectrium customer success manager like Tom through the chat feature

'Overview' dashboard

This screen displays high level information within the current period along with a list view of live charger information. Current charger errors will jump to a first read. Admins will be able to find:

• High level information on revenue, energy used, sessions, and occupancy within the last 30 days
• The current status of chargers and ports

• Time-sensitive errors which appear at the top of the dashboard and can be troubleshooted with a 'reset' button

'Reports' dashboard

This screen displays historical information. Admins will be able to find:

• Clear and visually striking graphs which display revenue and occupancy over time

• Logged charging session information sorted by ports or users

LECTRIUM ADMIN VIEW

This is the home screen for Lectrium customer success managers. Here they would have access to:

• High level information on Lectrium's revenue, their clients and properties, and current errors

• List view of clients with nested properties to select which property dashboard to inspect

Ideation

Testing & Stakeholder Feedback

We wanted to harmonize direct feedback from the Lectrium team with feedback received through user testing. We conducted two rounds of usability testing along with periodically checking in with the Lectrium team. We found this balance to emphasize shared ownership and learning while allowing for us to follow our desired User Experience process. We proposed that this two-pronged approach of feedback and testing would facilitate more robust improvements to our product and were delighted by the results.

Usability testing

We created four tasks to evaluate the usability of our mid fidelity MVP from the perspective of a property manager like Zoe. We deprioritized the admin screen to cater this testing experience to the property manager users, knowing that the Lectrium admin screen would be heavily influenced by the property manager dashboard. The four tasks we tested on were:

• Flowing through the onboarding process
• Resolving charger errors
• Viewing historical data for a specific tenant
• Adding a new charger

The usability of these tasks would be evaluated by their success rate, the time spend on the task, and a reported easiness rating (5 = easy, 1 = difficult).

Improving our design

Onboarding improvements

User FEEDBACK

• Users were unsure of what 'user groups' and 'access settings' meant

Design Improvements

• Added hoverable instructional copy to orient confused users

Additional Alterations

• Changed card items to list view to allow for further flow down the page. Our previous method of horizontal card scrolling wouldn't accommodate high numbers of ports or users

Navigation improvements

User FEEDBACK

• ‘Add/edit’ button was difficult to find – users assumed the button wouldn’t be in the same place as the main content
• ‘Live’/‘logged’ terminology was confusing to users

Design Improvements

• Changed 'add/edit' label to 'manage,' and moved it to the top level of the navigation
• Changed 'live' to 'overview' and 'logged' to 'reports'

Additional alterations

• Created secondary navigation with a clearer property selection dropdown and more apparent toggle between 'overview' and 'reports' pages

Overview dashboard improvements

User FEEDBACK

• Users want to see when their chargers are busiest
• Users felt overwhelmed by the amount of high level information

Design Improvements

• Added an occupancy by hour chart
• Reprioritized high level info to give revenue, energy, and session information the first read

Additional alterations

• Increased negative space in list views for improved legibility

Reports dashboard improvements

User FEEDBACK

• Users experienced difficulty navigating to historical data due to proximity and visual hierarchy issues with ‘live’ and ‘logged’ buttons which was interpreted as being related to the graphs below

Design Improvements

• Placed ‘live’ and ‘logged’ buttons in nav bar,  changed to ‘overview’ and ‘reports’

Additional alterations

• Created a toggle between ports and users to avoid an excess of scrolling if a property had many chargers or users

Usability Testing Scorecards

Task 1: Onboarding

Task 2: Troubleshooting Errors

Task 3: Find Tenant's historical Data

Task 4: Add A New Charger

Closeout

Next Steps Toward Implementation

• Refine the admin view through usability testing
• Interview more property managers to find which reports and graphs would be of most use to them
• Set metrics for a successful implementation