An iOS App For Line Crews

An app that helps SCE’s lineworkers register and get online RFI’s, devices that can shut off power remotely.

All to help SCE reduce the threat of wildfires in California.

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My Role
UX Lead, overseeing a junior and a senior UX Designer.

Deliverables
Flows, Wires, Mockups, Prototypes, Training Document

The Business Problem

Only about half of the RFI's actually work because inventory and asset information was not being stored accurately in the system of record.

The current process of filling out paper forms was tedious and error prone, and stakeholders didn’t get critical information until days after paperwork was turned in.

How do we define success?

Substantially reduce number of data inaccuracies

Reduce amount of time data gets to stakeholders.

Get rid of the current PDF & automate filling fields as much

Solution

Create an app that takes advantage of the iPhone’s hardware and software to speed up the process of entering info while reducing data entry substantially.

And multiply those advantages by several hundred thousand installed units.

Discovery

We interviewed stakeholders to understand the need. We then interviewed and job shadowed users to understand their current process and pain points.

I love getting into the heads of users and stakeholders. I listen for what they mean, and not necessarily what they say.

Then we map out the flows....

In the beginning, we did very simple flows.

I found that stakeholders were having trouble understanding the basic flows, so after wires were developed, we added more detail to the flows by using actual sketches of the screens.

The Wires

The first thing you might notice is the lack of annotations. We use the principles of Lean UX to minimize documentation. We use a handoff tool, like Zeplin and Invision's Inspect, along with user stories in Jira to communicate the design and interactions.

Visual Design Explorations

With an established design system, I usually like to start exploring visual design during the wires phase. I’m happy to get early feedback on functional visual design choices. Here, I explored color coding the scans so the user better understands which phase they're scanning, as well as a bit more white space.

Enter Details
(wire)

Enter Details
(design)

Scan RFI
(wire)

Scan RFI
(design)

Along with abbrieviated user testing

During the wires phase, we also sat down with a handful of users to get their feedback. And at points we also performed guerrilla testing to get feedback on new interactions.

The Prototype

We all know a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, an interactive prototype is worth a million words. I jump in to prototyping quickly because it's easier to demonstrate experience to stakeholders with prototypes. My preference is Axure, because it’s more robust, but Figma, Invision, or Adobe XD prototypes have their place as well.

And I can also use the prototype for user testing.