Moixa electric vehicle charging app
Company: Moixa (now Lunar Energy) in partnership with Honda
Role: UX and UI Designer
Team: Product manager, 2 x developers, hardware designers, commercial managers.
Project: Proof of concept electric vehicle charging mobile app for Honda. App needs to charge an electric vehicle to save money and use solar energy where possible in the UK.
Methods: Research, 4-day Design Sprint, wireframes and full UI design of a native mobile app for iOS and Android.
exploration
After a few weeks of research and planning, we went into a 4-day design sprint to accelerate the process and produce a testable prototype by the end of the week and test with outside users (x5).
The first part of the sprint included lightning talks by other researchers to get a deep understanding of business and user needs. We created a wall of “How Might We…” posts to explore ideas.
User journey
From these we were able to get more clarity on content a draft of a user journey with pagination. This was then a rough guide that ticks all the user and business needs as were previously laid out.
Sketching
We each took a category or two and using a storyboard style we sketched out some potential ideas of how to solve these problems. This one was for charging and how to set to optimise the energy at the cheapest times of the day.
By placing all the sketches on a wall, we were able to analyse and vote on which ideas we felt worked for the app. We were then able to create a more detailed user journey and start sketching out a prototype.
Prototype
In order to be able to test with users on the final day of the sprint, I created a fast prototype in Invision from the sketches and ideas. This was in the brand colours (sort of!) and worked on a mobile app.
We then interviewed 5 users (different levels of use of electric vehicles) with the same scenarios (“you need to get to Richmond by 5pm on Thursday, what would you set?” etc.
Playback and feedback
After testing, we invited everyone that had been involved in the sprint and the project to a playback session of the results. Each post-it is a piece of feedback from each interviewee and was then stuck to the screen it was referred to. I then collected all of this feedback into a spreadsheet so we could justify any requests against any restraints.
High level design iteration
From the results of the design sprint, we then felt confident that we were heading in the right direction to produce a build of an iOS app for Beta testing. The EV app had to fit into the Moixa app (which measures solar energy on a home and can monitor electricity usage and the source of electricity).
Using an iterative approach and lots of feedback and reviewing, I worked closely with developers and our amazing product manager, we built the app which was then used to show Honda how Moixa can manage electric energy to fuel vehicles in the most efficient way to save money and use renewable energy. Win for Moixa, win for the future of the planet!
In the Press
Honda and Moixa continue their partnership to manage energy in the most resourceful way and this proof of concept was part of the partnership coming to fruition. I left the company in 2019 but enjoy seeing it come to light in the news.
