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The project

Electrabel is part of GDF SUEZ, an international industrial and services group that is active in energy and the environment.

Electrabel is an important provider of global energy solutions in Europe and the market leader for the production of electricity in the Benelux. For a lot of their larger customers, rational use of energy is an important component of their strategy. To support those customers Electrabel provides them with several online tools to manage their energy consumption.

The challenge

Electrabel hired Human Interface Group to evaluate their existing energy management tools, Energy Kronos and Energy Explorer. But the challenge turned out to be bigger than expected. Based on the results of the evaluation, it became clear that the user-friendliness and functionalities of the existing tools needed to be improved and it was decided to rethink the user interface and functionality thoroughly.

What we did

Human Interface Group started with evaluating the existing energy management tools through the method of user testing.

• In a first phase Human Interface Group and Electrabel invited 15 customers to take part in the usability tests of Energy Kronos, an online 'real-time' tool to follow up on energy consumption.
• In a second phase user tests of Energy Explorer were performed with 16 of Electrabel's customers. Energy Explorer is a tool to analyze the information on a company’s energy bill.

All test users were asked to perform a number of realistic tasks in the application on their own computer and at their own desk. Both evaluations resulted in the same conclusion: significant changes to the user interface were needed to enhance the efficiency of use of the applications and to meet the day-to-day requirements of customers.

In the test report of both applications, Human Interface Group had provided Electrabel already with some good recommendations and ideas for the redesign of the tools. In the third phase of the project Human Interface Group was consequently asked to work these ideas and Electrabel's ideas further out in a detailed user interface design of Energy Explorer and Energy Kronos. The wireframes Human Interface Group created were then developed by Electrabel in the graphical style of the corporate website.

Rethinking functionality based on test results

Based on the test results and users’ experiences, existing functionality was redesigned entirely. Users of Energy Explorer indicated for example that they would like to use a standard structure of electricity and gas installations because new installations could then be added automatically.

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On the other hand users also wanted to be able to use a personalized structure. Human Interface Group therefore recommended providing users, next to the standard structure, with the possibility to define additional criteria for grouping their installations.

On the other hand, Electrabel proposed to use for Energy Kronos a totally new “installation approach” in order to facilitate the search operation. Human Interface Group conceived the necessary designs for the pages where this approach is been applied. 

Collecting information from the users for developing new functionality

Furthermore, we gathered information during the user tests that allowed Electrabel to define detailed requirements for new functionality. Based on these requirements we created wireframes for the new pages.

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All test users indicated that a Dashboard function would be a great improvement because of the visual representation of the data. Therefore, a Dashboard tab was consequently added to the design of Energy Explorer and Energy Kronos.

Consistent design to reduce the learning curve

Human Interface Group proposed a consistent design of both applications to keep coherence through the applications. Customers, who use both tools, can then rely on their knowledge of one application for finding their way in the other application.

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In both applications the same patterns for e.g. making selections, for the dashboard or for searching are proposed.

Supporting the users

Another important remark of a lot of test users was the lack of user documentation to support them in analyzing the data provided in both tools. Therefore Human Interface Group developed for both applications an extensive online help system to guide users through the different pages of the application and to support them in their tasks.

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Access to the help files was integrated on different levels in the applications.

Results

The totally revamped Energy Kronos and Explorer now offer a streamlined and consistent user experience. Moreover, the functionalities have been tuned to meet the needs of energy managers in small and large companies.