Con Edison
I am a product designer at Wunderman Thompson, a digital agency that serves clients of sizes and backgrounds, helping their digital strategy take off. One of our top clients was Con Edison, the utility company that powers all of Manhattan and Westchester area.
Platform
Desktop, Mobile
Themes
Information Architecture, Interaction design, User Research, Product Strategy, Visual Design, Accessibility
Team
PM, Dev, Design, Data Science, Client
Timeline
2019 - 2020
INTRO
Serving everyone
For ConEd, I led UX and design for our web desktop and mobile experience. The challenge of designing any aspect of a system like this is that the user base literally consists of everyone, from every age group to every demographic, with unique added goal of having to convert existing live services user base to utilize automated services.
Starting with our Call to Digital initiative, its goal was to convert as many current non-digital users to the digital platform and entice new users to use it. With this initiative, I personally led over 30 projects and features to achieve its goals.
GOALS
How might we revamp an entire flow while keeping it familiar?
One of the features I spearheaded is the new Start Service, which helps people start, move or stop their service. This is one of the most important services that is one of the most used features on the platform, and also contained the largest number of users. After many iterations, we were able to combine the strengths of a friendly natural language system with a much simplified flow into an entirely new experience.
The Guided Entry
We took inspiration from natural language systems, and combined it with informative illustrations to design it for the widest range of users possible
This was designed to be “friendly and knowledgable” so that users would get a similar experience if they were to call customer service
Streamlined Forms
We revamped and simplified form fields to include as much visual information while keeping typing and text as little as possible
The simplified flow helped mitigate situations where users were quitting the form mid-way through, and increased completion rates by 87%
Animations
I spearheaded the introduction and inclusion of animation into our design process, and this is the first instance of animation being applied onto the ConEd platform
Animation helped highlight changes and updates of information that users can interact with, since the page does not reload upon clicking the first few selections
OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
Improving informational clarity
My Account is where users can manages their entire service, from checking their bills to enrolling in different programs. This is also the most complicated part of the entire website, with layers upon layers of information and interactions. We looked at some of the oldest designed modules and gave them a much needed redesign.
Payment Modules
Before
Very functionally designed, but fails to give information at a glance, and requires a lot of reading
After
Contains more information while visually decluttering noise
Registration Completion
Before
Giving users a confirmation is good, but it serves no other purpose and is wasted
After
Brought brand colors and elements, while giving users options to complete other critical tasks and ways to exit the page
Logged-In State
New Feature
Newly designed logged in states for the homepage allows users to gain more contextual information and potential for contextual interactions
SITEWIDE REDESIGN
Introducing accessibility
You might have noticed the picture above, where the blue is darker than those before it. We began planning an entire accessibility workstream last year that will eventually benefit more than 1.5 million users statewide, where we began to look at each and every single component on the website. From font to color to buttons to navigation to logo.
In the end, we made changes to not only color contrast based on WCAG guidelines, but also made improvements to mental accessibility blocks such as button placement and contextual copy.
CONCEPT PITCH
A next generation customer experience
Looking to the future, our team is planning to integrate a slew of upcoming technologies to make things even easier and simpler for our users. One of these endeavors was creating a concept for a Chatbot, to be completed sometime in 2021. We designed the prototype around how users would interact with a semi-automated experience that tied voice control and AI, and how we might update the current Start Service flow into this new technology.
Video snippet of a flow for the above mentioned Start Service, completed entirely within a chatbot conversation. (Created with Adobe XD’s prototyping and animation system)
Because of this prototype, we were able to pitch this workstream to the ConEd team and win the pitch. With the win along with some others, we were able to secure 3 more years of commitment from ConEd and hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for the agency and our team.
EVERY COMPANY IS A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
Our team is preparing the ConEd digital platform to become the premiere way for users to interact with the leading utility company and how they manage their power. This team and its projects is unique in the way that we serve literally everyone, every age group, demographic and ethnicity. Power is something every single person needs, and we are giving them the tools and empowering them through our digital platform.