Solar Operational Insights Platform

Turning complex performance data into confident decisions

(UX Case Study — details redacted for confidentiality)

Role: UX Architect / Product Designer
Scope: UX research, storytelling, dashboard design, decision-support UX
Product Type: Enterprise analytics platform
Timeline: Multi-phase concept and validation
Confidentiality: Product names, metrics, and visuals generalized

Overview

This project explored how operational teams use performance and environmental data to decide when to take action — balancing cost, efficiency, and risk.

The core challenge wasn’t data availability. It was helping users understand tradeoffs, trust insights, and act with confidence.

I led UX strategy and experience design to translate complex analytics into clear, decision-ready guidance.

The problem

Users were presented with large volumes of data, but struggled to answer practical questions:

Is performance degradation actually meaningful right now?
When is action worth the cost?
What happens if we wait?
How do we justify decisions to stakeholders?

Insights existed — but decision confidence did not.

UX challenge:
How might we help users move from raw data to clear, defensible decisions?

Users & mental models

Research and synthesis revealed distinct user needs:

Operators needed to know what to do next
Managers needed to justify actions with evidence
Stakeholders needed to understand financial impact

While their perspectives differed, all users shared a need for:

Clarity
Context
Confidence

Design approach

Instead of designing dashboards first, I designed around user questions:

What changed?
Why does it matter?
What are my options?
What is the cost of action vs inaction?

The experience was intentionally structured to progress from insight → implication → recommendation, allowing users to engage at their preferred depth.

Key UX principles & design responses

1. Make value explicit

Performance trends were paired with cost and outcome implications so users could clearly see why an action mattered, not just that something changed.

UX principle:
Data earns trust when value is visible.

2. Support planning, not just monitoring

Users didn’t just want status — they wanted help planning.

UX response

Introduced time-based planning views
Framed actions as strategic decisions, not alerts
Helped users evaluate timing tradeoffs over weeks or months

3. Reduce cognitive load with progressive detail

Rather than overwhelming users:

High-level summaries answered “Should I care?”
Drill-downs answered “Why is this happening?”
Supporting data remained available without being forced

This allowed different users to stop where they felt confident.

4. Explain insights through narrative

Insights were intentionally framed as stories, not charts:

What’s happening
Why it matters
What to do next

This approach helped users internalize insights and communicate decisions to others.

Key experience concepts

Performance impact overview with trend context
Financial implications tied directly to timing decisions
Short-term and long-term planning views
Comparative scenarios to evaluate action vs delay

(All visuals and metrics abstracted for confidentiality.)

Outcomes

This work established a UX direction that:

Reduced ambiguity around operational decisions
Helped users balance cost, performance, and risk
Enabled clearer communication across roles
Turned analytics into decision support

Publishing note

This case study reflects UX strategy and conceptual design work. Product names, visuals, and internal metrics have been generalized to respect confidentiality.