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Enabling renewable energy professionals to make critical decisions

Role

UX Researcher & Designer

Industry

Clean energy

Duration

4 months

I was assigned the task of redesigning IREAP (Indian Renewable Energy Appliances Portal), a comprehensive repository of renewable energy appliances managed by the CLEAN Network, an organization based in India. The project aimed to revamp the product catalog, streamline the process of finding relevant information, and enhance the overall user experience of the portal.

Background

The website serves three primary purposes:

Helping users find renewable energy appliances.
Providing educational resources about renewable energy.
Facilitating connections between users and vendors.

User research revealed that the majority of visitors primarily use the portal to search for appliances and directly contact vendors. As a result, the redesign focused heavily on optimizing the appliance discovery process to better meet user needs.

Stage 1: Usability Audit

The IREAP Portal was evaluated using Nielsen Norman Group’s Ten Usability Heuristics to identify potential areas for improvement. Each issue uncovered during the heuristic evaluation was rated using Jeff Sauro’s severity scale, which categorizes usability issues as follows:

Minor: Causes slight hesitation or mild irritation.
Moderate: Occasionally results in task failure for some users, leading to delays and moderate frustration.
Critical: Consistently results in task failure, causing significant user frustration.

Additionally, Insights/Suggestions/Positives represent user observations or ideas that either enhance or have the potential to improve the overall experience.

This evaluation provided a baseline understanding of the portal’s usability challenges. Below are some of the key issues identified during the analysis.

Background

The website serves three primary purposes:

Helping users find renewable energy appliances.
Providing educational resources about renewable energy.
Facilitating connections between users and vendors.

Stage 1: Usability Audit

Minor: Causes slight hesitation or mild irritation.
Moderate: Occasionally results in task failure for some users, leading to delays and moderate frustration.
Critical: Consistently results in task failure, causing significant user frustration.

Additionally, Insights/Suggestions/Positives represent user observations or ideas that either enhance or have the potential to improve the overall experience.

This evaluation provided a baseline understanding of the portal’s usability challenges. Below are some of the key issues identified during the analysis.

The term ‘Activities’ does not accurately describe the content under the sub-section

Heuristic violated: Match between system and real world

The Products section, when selected, shows a list of activities and sub-activities
Heuristic violated: Match between system and real world

The ‘Send Enquiry’ page does not display the name or image of the product the user is enquiring about.

Heuristic violated: Error prevention

When the user finds a product, they would have to remember the Activity and the sub-activities to find it again.
Heuristic violated: Recognition rather than recall

Stage 2: User research

To gain a better understanding of the demographics, field expertise, and professional experience of the users, I sent out a survey and conducted interviews with the current IREAP users.

Some of the key findings of the user research were:

Although many users were familiar with DRE concepts, they did not have as much knowledge about appliances and hence found the website navigation confusing
The IREAP portal saves a lot of time for users while looking for renewable alternatives to existing products
Users had varying levels of experience in the field of renewable energy

Stage 3: User Testing

User testing helps understand how the users interact with the existing sites and the issues that they face while completing tasks. Ten users were tested and were asked to complete three different scenarios.

Some of the key findings of the usability testing are as follows:

100% of the participants found the loading times very slow
First-time users did not know what the term ‘Activities’ meant
All users expressed frustration while trying to compare two appliances
No participant used the quick links on the home page even though it would have saved them three clicks