Helping turn a new energy brand into a digital product ready to serve millions of customers in just 14 weeks
Role:
UI Design
Team:
UI | UX | Product/Delivery | Engineering
Agency
Somo
E.ON Next was a new digital-first energy brand, being built on an existing platform and prepared for launch at speed.
I joined the project through Somo as Lead UI Designer, working alongside another senior UI designer and a wider UX, product, engineering and delivery team.
With 14 weeks to get it over the line, we had a lot of work ahead of us.
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There wasn't time for a perfectly linear design process.
We were working with existing Kraken functionality, UX and UI were often moving in parallel and Jira tickets were coming through thick and fast.
With two UI designers covering a lot of ground, we divided up the work equally, shared ideas and picked things up from each other whenever we needed to. The priority was keeping everything moving in the same direction.
Constant communication kept us on track.
E.ON Next already had a polished new visual identity. Our job was to work out how that translated into a tangible digital experience.
We took the character, colour and energy of the brand and translated it into a responsive interface that could work across desktop, tablet and mobile.
Across the span of the project we worked through a huge number of interconnected customer flows, from Profile and account management to Listings, Vehicle profiles & fuel finder
This only scratched the surface.
we weren't just applying the brand to wireframes. We were stress-testing the visual language by applying it to scenarios that hadn't yet been considered.
There wasn't a single source of truth for the design system.
We inherited two separate design libraries, both containing a mixture of current and outdated components. Neither could simply be discarded, so it was necessary to work through them to understand what elements were still relevant and what needed to go.
We consolidated the useful parts into a single library the team could rely on, while continuing to design and deliver the product around it.
With the two libraries consolidated, we had a consistent library everyone could work from.
Bringing together the core elements of the E.ON Next digital experience.
The new shared library could continue to evolve alongside the product, forming the building blocks of an evolving design system.
Importantly for us, it gave us consistency across the product without getting in the way of delivery.
The first release of the E.ON Next site launched on time, despite the tight deadline.
It formed a substantial part of the platform used to migrate more than one million nPower customers to E.ON Next.
The platform continued to grow after launch, eventually serving more than 6.5 million customers and contributing to a reported £1m-a-day reduction in operating costs.
Initial migration of 1m+ nPower customers
Customers served as the platform scaled
Reported reduction in operating costs
A later sprint explored how some of the core journeys could translate into a native app.
Working closely with UX, we developed prototypes that explored how a native app could offer a more focused experience than the web, making specific tasks such as submitting a meter reading easier to complete.
We tested different approaches with existing E.ON Next customers, using the findings to understand where a dedicated app could add value.
Looking back, this project probably taught me more than any other about the difference between a good design process on paper and what it takes to actually deliver one in practice.
Things don’t always happen in the ideal order, but in this instance they didn't need to.
We had a team willing to share ownership, communicate and make sensible decisions with the information we had.
Sometimes forward momentum is more important than getting everything perfect on the first try.
