home charging pilot
Home charing app with easy scheduling feature
With exponential growth, Home charging became one of the hottest sectors in EV space. Ivy, the largest fast-charging network in Ontario, reached out to ChargeLab to propose a home charging pilot project. Given the tight deadline(1month), we were able to ship a brand new home charging app within a month. The result was very positive and this feature eventually got incorporated into ChargeLab app.
Lead designer
6 Engineers, 1 PM
1 month
UX/UI design, Interaction design, Prototyping
Challenges
The main purpose of home charging is to save costs by charging overnight when energy costs are the lowest. Therefore, scheduling is the most important feature of this app. Given that most of the pilot users are new to EV home charging, it was the main challenge to make the UI/UX as simple and seamless as possible so users can set up a schedule and start saving money without any learning curves.
Opportunity
How might we make this home charging app simple and easily adaptable?
Final design
Intuitive home charging app
that is easy to use
Minimal yet informative
To prevent users from being overwhelmed, I designed simple and minimal UI while educating users about the benefits of scheduled charging.
Easy to setup schedule
Drew inspiration from familiar mental models (alarm clock) to reduce learning curve. Users can use the toggle to enable/disable their schedule quickly.
Track and monitor session
While the vehicle is being charged, users can track and monitor the charging session on home screen.
scheduling ui improvement
6 months after the home charging release, we've gathered user feedback. One of the frequent requests was to add a visual elements about the charging schedule. The current UI being text heavy, It was not clear enough for some users how their set schedule will take place. Hence, we needed to add some visual elements to improve clarity.
Pilot user
I want some visual that helps me understand my scheudling window
Iteration 1 - Slider
The first iteration was to change the text input field to a slider. However, the issue was that reversing the time range was not possible. For this example, the user can’t change to 7 am ~ 7 pm. Depending on the region, off-peak time could be daytime as well thus we need to make it possible to choose a time range whichever the user wants.
Pilot user
I want to set my schedule time in daytime.
Iteration 2 - Reverse
Adding a reverse button allowed to set schedule in daytime. However, I encountered a bigger issue; the slider design uses x-axis only. There is only so much space to adjust the time. Feedback from users told us that they want more micro-control of their schedule.
Pilot user
I want do more micro-control such as 7:10 instead of 7:30 or 7:00
More clarity and easier to adjust time
Clock UI uses both x & y-axis thus it’s much easier to micro-control the time. Now users can set time in 10 min incremental. In addition, It is visually more clear to understand how the schedule will work.
outcome
The pilot project was very successful, and we didn’t have any major issues throughout. Ivy was satisfied with the result and decided to keep doing a partnership for home charging with us and even considered changing their current software partner for their public charging app with ChargeLab.
Pilot user
I really love the simplicity of UI and
how easy it is to use the app
No major issues during pilot period
Secured long term partnership with Ivy
Home charging feature was added to ChargeLab app
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