An Holistic application for your electric car and charging Station owners

Problem Statement

How might we design a Application for OBE admin & Electric car owner that mitigates his/her current issues of finding the real time data from the station and also to find the right station for charging and improves Car owners & OBE admin experience by giving a one stop application for both OBE admin & Car owners.

Mission & Challenges

Obe has a product we want to make sure that we are building toward the future and not toward what has already been built. As a user of electric car where you can find EV stations around you and knowing which ones are also available around you. While building we wanted to make sure it is not enough that you need to charge your car how convenience to charge the car for instants when user is planning by route or places where users can go that will have a place to charge while I am in the parking place.

The biggest Challenges is to show the user the live update about the Stations and also to get connected with the car to give them the live updates when they are on the long trip and many more.

Research

We did a basic market research to understand about the product , We found According to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 58% of global passenger vehicle sales in 2040 will come from electric vehicles, yet they will make up less than 33% of all cars on the road.

And as of December 31, 2020 there were a total of 96,536 public charging ports – including Level 1, Level 2, and DC fast chargers. With 30,451 locations, the average ports per location across all charger types was 3.16.

Competitors

Car dashboard

Researched on dashboard to find what information has been viewed by user while they are driving their car ( For this I took Audi E-tron and Chevy bolt).

User Interviews

We did 2 interviews one with the regular commute and other user is occasional driving.

👉 Regular Commute - The user takes his car on daily basis for office, shopping etc., where he might charge his car on the go or near to office or on home or on office parking

👉 Occasional Commute - The user takes his car once or twice a week , where goes out for shopping or for a short trip. He will charge in home, Shopping mall, On the go when he travel for long ride.

🚨 Pains & Needs

• The space can be occupied. So we get there and we find that a gas driven gar happens to be parked in one of these places. The person can drive over to the space and find that it is occupied.

• Not all locations are public or for convenience. Sometimes they are for residences only.

• Too many platforms and too many ways of paying, its very painful.

• Difficult to understand the range of EV cars when you go from Point A to point B

• No information on if charging stations are private or public

• Many smaller hardware players exist, which enforces users to signup across every single platform

• Unplug and move the car at the end of every charging, which is inconvenient

Observational Research

For this research we went to OBE power station to understand the user behavior , how people are come in for car charge to move out after they charge. Below few glimpse of the charging station.

Key Insights

From the User interviews and observational research that we did, from that we collected the key insights for the application

Prioritization

From the completing the interviews with the customer and stake holder, we listed down the both the observation and interview insight. So by doing that ,we created a prioritising mapping for the MVP. Once this is done we then created a specification document for the MVP by doing brainstorming.

Brainstorming

💡 Did a white boarding sessions to understand the organization structure ,workflow of the product and also getting ideas to Solve the challenges and problems. By doing this , which helps to create a specification document.

Ev Driver

Application - IOS & Android

We did a lean canvas meeting with these people to understand their pains and need, The peoples involved are Electric car owners for consumer facing app, the charging station owners for Host Portal and Obe owners for the admin portal.

Userflow

These high-level structures highlight critical user flows of the application and break down processes the user would use to achieve specific tasks. This flow define , as a user need to reserve a station for charging.

Sketching

Sketching first allowed me to gain an intimate insight on what layouts will work before getting digital with it.

Wireframing

Creating detailed wireframes helped make navigation seamless and straightforward.

Visual Design

Signup

I wanted to give user a personalized experience based on their car they have. So i decided to get the make and model of the car on the signup process itself. By getting this we gave give the retails time date inside app, to mention some availability of the connector, real time charging updated while they are away from the car, range of the car to give them the nearest car station. We also wanted them to add their card to the apple wallet to have seamless and fast payment while they have the charging done.

Booking

✏️ While booking User can search from the current location they are, once they select any station, they can find the detail of the station, location, rates, popular times and book can done by scanning the QR code in the station.

Trip Planner: This feature enables the user to create a long trip, based on which app shows nearby stations according to the range of the cars.

Motion Design

👍 Created motion design for the application using after effects and Implemented using JSON. Which helps the user for better engagement while they use the application.

The Final Outcome & Solutions

👍 we can pay through my visa card and I don’t need to have a certain account set up so I can use my Visa card ( or apple wallet).

• Provide a way to reserve a time slot for charging at a specific charging station

• Provide an easy way to inform Drivers in real time about their range based on vehicle, route, charge points available at different locations along the way to help them get to their destination.

• Show if the location is private or public

• We provide one account to access our network of charging stations

• Inform the driver when the charging is complete & remind them to move vehicle as well as provide valet option where feasible

👍 Additional impact for social Educate drivers on the benefits of re-selling excess energy ****Responsible citizen medal to make them feel good about their contribution