Smart Electricity Meters, Saving Capital

1.About the project

Raymon new products were distributed in low quantities for beta tests, these Smart Electricity Meters would replace the traditional meters in houses and they could save thousands for homeowners.

In the beta test phase these meters would be regulated by inspectors from the company, as these meters were using blockchain technologies, the inspectors needed an admin panel that they could use upon inspection to read vital information and make adjustments.

These products had an English version panel to them but the company needed a new admin panel that would work in Farsi language.

Project owner had a vision of this panel that would more aligned with the brand’s identity as well and could be used easily with mobile devices

Role

UI + UX Designer Responsible for

information architecture,

wireframing,

design system,

interface design and prototyping

Client

Contractor: Salim innovation and technology house www.linkedin.com/company/salim-e-commerce-solutions

Respected Owner: www.raymonsmartland.ir

Date

2023 Oct - 2023 Dec

2.Challenges

Raymon has had some brand’s identity materials designed for them and was eager to integrate these in their products, the previous panel of the smart meters was a ready-made panel that did not have anything to do with the brand’s identity at all.

The former was in English language, owners were in need of a panel designed in Farsi language, also based on owner’s user research on inspectors the information architecture did not make sense in some places. 

Former panel was optimized for desktop, but owner user research showed that inspectors were mainly using their mobile devices when on mission.

This panel was mainly used for the inspectors to oversight the Events happening between the meter, a router and the blockchain network, these events had huge data to them and in mobile devices reading these could be problematic for the inspectors.

In the former data about the meters were not categorized and organized properly and were placed in bulk so eye-scan proved to be difficult.

In former no roles were defined so all the inspectors and admins were using the same panel and had the same authorization. 

Time limitations were set by product owner, so separate designs for desktop and mobile was not possible, owner needed a desktop design that could be made responsive, easy and fast without complications

3.Process and Solution

Firstly, I analyzed the former panel to get a general idea of how it worked and to understand flows and features; after that I conducted a meeting with the project owner to get a deeper understanding of the panel’s functionalities; some points were noted by the project owner and listing these requirements and notes, next phase of the process initiated.

Since the project owner had a close connection to the panel's users, my main source of data and user’s preferences was them.

Consulting with the tech team and learning their limitations i decided to take a desktop first approach although user researches showed that our users will use mobile devices more, we as a team with the help of the product owner decided to design desktop first so an agile approach would be taken toward development, yet as a designer i should’ve kept in mind to design in a way that could be made responsive easily and meaningfully.

First Challenge was to design a comprehensive information architecture and data grouping, that would make sense to a professional inspector and be user centered as well.

I gathered all the data the former panel had and grouped them into an architecture and then we had full discussions with the owner and several inspectors to polish, after confirmation I moved on to wireframes.

Several User flows had been described that was visualized in order to help us through the process

Also In this phase I tried to translate what could be translated from English to Farsi.

A mini design system was conducted based on brand assets to help us in design;

After 2 meetings with the owner and some revise in the wireframes, they got approved by the owner so I resumed the interface design phase.

4.Results

Interface were rapidly developed and ran for tests in order to make sure of their functionalities and a clean back-end; then the files were hand off to the project owner;

further updates about the projects are in hands of the mentioned company.

working on new products that are out of my comfort zone and knowledge area proves to be challenging but i was happy with the final results and always happy to redesign this brilliant product, below you can see some shots from the project