Electric Vehicle (EV) Infrastructure Marketplace

B2B marketplace for stakeholders in the EV charging infrastructure ecosystem.

EV Marketplace

Key highlights of this project

Design Thinking Workshop

Vision Board

CSAT Surveys

Overview

Value Proposition

Vahanomy aims to become a central player in the EV charging infrastructure ecosystem by providing location intelligence services as one of its core offerings. These services would offer data-driven insights to accelerate the rollout of EV charging infrastructure and facilitate the decarbonization of transport. In order to enable this core offering, the company needs to develop and launch Chrgr.io as its initial offering. Chrgr.io will serve as a B2B marketplace for all stakeholders in the EV charging infrastructure ecosystem and act as a funnel to gather necessary data to drive location intelligence

For stakeholders within EV charging infrastructure ecosystem who find it difficult to source property, services, EVSE, charge point operators and investors. Chrgr.io is a first of its kind marketplace that allows people/entities to enlist their property, services, or Electric Vehicle Services and Equipment (EVSE) and Charge Point Operators (CPO’s) to source demands for the same. This product gives a web-based hassle-free experience of a one stop shop that serves all the needs within the EV charging infrastructure ecosystem, it has something for everyone.

Client

Role & Responsibilities

Product Designer
User Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing

https://chrgr.io/

Project Summary

Business Objective

Create a marketplace for property owners, and service providers in the EV charging space.
Subscription-based service for monetisation.

Success Criteria

Test prototypes with prospective laboratories before implementing the solution
Use services by launching services and taking feedback from customers

Use Goals

One source of truth for service providers and property owners to collaborate with each other with the help of platform

Challenges

Understand the domain
Testing of application with stakeholders
Prioritisation based on stakeholder changing needs
Usability testing

Outcome

Successful beta release of the application.

The Problem

Data availability and findability are crucial factors for the users of the marketplace.

Property owners, charge point operators, and service providers are the main users of the EV Marketplace. They are creators and users of data. Finding the right data is key to connecting each business with others.

It will be difficult to run individual businesses without a system that will help to connect property owners, charge point operators, and service providers.

Stakeholder Workshop

A 5-day workshop was conducted with the DUII stakeholders, Product Manager, and Engineering Architect. My research encompassed -

Fig: Illustration showing workshop journey

Fig: photographs of a workshop involving stakeholders, product manager, and engineering.

Persona

Based on discussion with stakeholder target group, user persona of the application defined.

Persona of Property Owner

Persona of Charge Point Operator

Vision Board

Vision Board was created to clearly identify market segments, problems trying to solve, product and business goals

Screenshot 2023-04-28 at 12.21.37 PM.png

Fig: photographs of a vision board created during workshop involving stakeholders, product manager, and engineering.

Understand User Types

Property Owner

Commercial land owner
Developer
Property manager
Local authority/ public body
Parking operator
Tenant
Mobile/ Portable asset
Others

Charge Point Operator

Local authority/ public body
Auto company
Energy company
App/ EV charging aggregator
Independent CPO
Investor/ consolidators
others (Text box)

Service Provider

Consultants/ professional services
Installation/Maintenance/ Equipment Maintenance
EVSE / Equipment’s
Managed Serviced
Investors
Aggregators
Others (text box)
Electricity providers / Utility

Property Type

Parking
Convenience Store
Car garage / Gas Station
Grocery store
Hotel
Mixed use
Hospitals
Leisure
Restaurant

10. Retail

11. Service area/ Rest area

12. Shopping centre

13. Office

14. Detached workplace

15. Library

16. Community centres

17. Others (free text, text box)

Property Owner

Feature Brainstorming & Concept Sketches

Based on defined personas, features were identified for each personas and created concept sketches using whiteboard sessions.

Fig: photographs of a feature brainstorming created during a workshop involving stakeholders, product manager, and engineering.

Qualitative Interviews

After the stakeholder workshop, virtual users interviews were conducted with 18 users to validate identified personas and understand their pain points and challenges with the current EV charging ecosystem

I am not able to find trusted people whom I can lease property without any trouble.

Property Owner I Manchester, UK

It is very troublesome to visit and evaluate each property for operation. Lot of time is wasted in this process with 10-20% success rate.

Charge Point Operator I Birmingham, UK

Not able to expand my business due to limited contacts in EV space.

Service Provider I Bristol, UK

Insights

After conducting user interviews, and analyzing the gathered data, I was able to categorize the insights into these 3 categories

Findability

A limited set of people in EV operating space
Difficult to identify the right set of people in the EV space considering property size and scale of operation

Relibility

Relibility of service provider who can provide necessary services for smooth operation of service point

Networking

Lack of resources who will help to network property owner, charge point operator and service providers.

Task Flows

Task flow of listing or demand page

Fig: Screenshot of task flow on Miro

Concepts

I started creating low-fi concepts for primary use cases. After having a go-ahead from the Product Manager, developers, and Stakeholders on the mockups, we began to conduct usability tests with the low-fidelity mockups. Once we had confidence in the design, we began digitalizing designs.

1/3

The Solution

Listing a Property

This feature will help property owners to list their property with required details such as location, specifications.

Reusable Assets

Considering the scope of work for the next features created a reusable asset library for consistency of experience.

Usability Testing

I tested the product at various stages of the project.

• Lo-fi prototypes were tested with the stakeholders weekly to get feedback on the product's functionality, content, and interactivity.

• Unmoderated User testing - A few dummy tasks were assigned to app users. All participants were using the app to carry out hypothetical tasks.

• Beta Testing - Before releasing the app, we tested it with one of the labs to take their go-ahead.

Seeing Results (Beta Release)

Customer satisfaction Survey

User survey was conducted for key workflows where they were facing challenges in a current desktop application using the SurveyMonkey tool for critical workflows