Solar Metric was a fun exercise to create a data-oriented, investor-ready mobile experience in under a month. I've always had a passion for green tech and this was an opportunity to flex my product and design skills in a fun and productive way.
I keep this one in my portfolio because I think it offers great insight into how I tackle problems under time pressure and how I might go about scoping and designing something 0 - 1 from a design lead standpoint.
The ideation, the product brief and scoping, the designs, and the branding are all done by me over the course of 2 sprints in between applying for work :) Enjoy!
The goal of the SolarMetric project was to create a user-friendly app that would surpass the current market leader at the time, SolarCity, in terms of usability and design.
The SolarMetric app was designed to address the existing user pain points, which include the difficulty of tracking energy production, the lack of a community platform to share data, and the complexity of understanding how solar panels work.
Interesting Note: This project was actually inspired from my dad's difficulty with the app SolarCity. To him, it was too much information with too little value.
The SolarMetric app was designed to provide a lightweight, pleasant, and uncluttered solution for home solar owners.
Some of the app's key features include:
While SolarCity relied on a hamburger menu for navigation, I thought this was overkill. Creating a more simple, always-visible navigation interface was step number one in creating a competitively simpler product.
I drafted a quick information architecture flow based on a 5-icon fixed navigation tray. From here, a user could see their daily metrics (The default home screen), edit settings & profile, and interact with the 3 primary functions of the app: charting energy usage, interacting with other Solar Metric users, and reading articles from the industry.
With the exception of connecting a solar reader to the app via Bluetooth, no nav page was deeper than 2 screens. This offered a very lightweight experience and made getting lost very difficult.
Work sample below: A simple information architecture diagram which accounts for edge cases for sign in/up errors as well as device connectivity errors.
Real-time tracking of energy production and savings from home-solar systems, enabling users to monitor and optimize their energy consumption.
In a quick glance, users can see their overall grid usage vs. solar output and their projected savings/spending on energy. I also wanted to include additional, weather-based insights that would help a user understand how local weather patterns and precipitation could affect their production power.
Work sample: Insights & weather screens. (From left to right) The first 3 screens detail weekly, monthly, and annual views of solar usage vs. production.
The following 5 screens show daily insights. Note that they day can be toggled to any date in the past 2 weeks.
A community platform for users to connect and share their energy production data, allowing for friendly competition and sharing of best practices.
Solar Metric users can set their energy usage and production readings to public so that other enthusiasts can compare energy efficiency in their area. The user can tap on points of interest and view daily or average insights of energy usage and production for users in their area.
In addition to learning from their neighbors, users also have access to the "Insights" feature. These are curated blog posts to help users better understand how different regional and geographic factors affect their energy production.
Work sample: (From left to right) The first 5 screens show the map view for other solar users in the area. Screens 6 and 7 show a list view of the same functionality.
Screens 8 and 9 show SolarMetric "Insights" articles.
A simple Bluetooth connection to your Solar Metric home solar reader as well as simple quality of life settings such as sharing permissions, dark/light mode, and account settings.
Work sample: (From left to right) The first 3 screens show the process for connecting your Solar Metric app to a compatible solar reader hardware.
Screens 4 and 5 show settings with an example in light and dark mode.
The Solar Metric app's key features, including energy production tracking, predictive analytics, community platform, and user-friendly UI offer a simple yet effective solution to the often software-lacking, hardware-centric solar industry.
I was excited to tackle this exercise in 2 sprints from start to finish. When this design was first created, it was far more usable than anything on the market. In retrospect, I should have pushed to launch this as an actual product!
An unexpected win from this project: One of the most well known home solar apps, the Tesla Home Energy App, ended up creating a very similar design and information breakdown to my own design nearly 3 years later!
You can see the same general information organization, simple yet bright 3-color scheme, and a focus on ease of use over detail.
Check it out below:
