PowerbuY
Direct Energy
THE PROJECT
One of the system redesigns I helped with at Direct Energy was a portal called Powerbuy. Powerbuy allows energy suppliers to bid in real time on contracts to supply customers with electricity. In 2016 Powerbuy existed as its own portal but the business wanted to merge the Powerbuy capability with a different portal called MarketPro. Customers and internal stakeholders liked how the existing Powerbuy functioned so the project goal was to mimic the look and feel of Powerbuy within MarketPro.
GETTING STARTED
To recreate Powerbuy successfully, I had to understand how both Powerbuy and MarketPro functioned. I started by sitting down with the Powerbuy and MarketPro teams to get a walk through of both systems. The main design challenge with the project was to recreate the navigation hierarchy within MarketPro. The navigation style was very different in each system and to complicate things further, the functionality in MarketPro did not overlap with Powerbuy. Essentially we had two different experiences trying to live in the same space.
Once I felt I had a good understanding of both systems, I started wireframing ideas on a new navigation hierarchy for MarketPro. After drafting some ideas I moved on to designing the core functionality of Powerbuy.
REVISING & TESTING
To confirm the design was on the right track I demoed my ideas to the business stakeholders and development team. It turned out that the navigation was more complex than we initially thought so I needed to make some tweaks to the hierarchy. This included updating the admin capabilities in MarketPro to manage Powerbuy and its users. With a few more updates the design was approved and finalized.
Once the development team completed building the update, I helped test and validate the new design during UAT sessions and during the final release.
