Please note that certain details have been omitted from this case study due to the confidential nature of the project.
I led the UX design of a scalable market analysis solution for a major energy company.
Context
XYZ is a leading energy company with a strong presence across Europe. It specializes in the production, trading, and distribution of energy.
XYZ’s Market Analysis Team conducts in-depth research and analysis of European energy markets to support both internal operations and client needs. Their insights are vital for making informed trading and business development decisions.
I was tasked with addressing the scalability and efficiency challenges faced by the Market Analysis Team while delivering market updates to clients.
The goal was to develop a modern and scalable solution to onboard more clients and enhance XYZ’S Market Analysis service without increasing the workload on the Market Analysis Team.
My Role
Customer insight and research: I collaborated with various customer-facing departments and interviewed clients to uncover insights about the domain and the present state of the service offerings.
Experience strategy and ideation: I developed scenarios and low-fidelity prototypes to share the vision of the solution with the team, ensuring everyone understood the goal.
Design execution & validation: I created high-fidelity designs, prototypes, and design specifications.
Implementation: I worked alongside a team of developers to implement and test the design solution.
Research
Research goals:
- Gain insights into how clients currently use XYZ’s market analysis services.
- Identify pain points and challenges clients face with the existing service delivery model.
- Determine client preferences for receiving market updates and personalized insights.
- Map out the current workflow and processes used by the Market Analysis Team to prepare and deliver market updates.
- Identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the current workflow.
- Understand the workload distribution and capacity constraints of the analysts.
- Assess the effectiveness of the current tools and systems used for preparing and delivering market updates.
- Identify pain points and challenges clients face with the existing service delivery model.
- Identify opportunities for improving or replacing existing systems to enhance efficiency and user experience.
- Collect data on the current usage patterns, frequency of requests, and performance metrics of the market analysis services.
- Use this data to establish baseline metrics that can be used to measure the impact of the new solutions.
XYZ’s market analysis services, particularly the monthly Energy Market Report and personalized client calls, were well-regarded but faced scalability challenges. The increasing demand for these updates was straining the Market Analysis Team.
I reached out to stakeholders across the organization to get a complete picture of the decisions and limitations that led to the current state of the user experience. This involved understanding patterns of usage, existing pain points, and gathering insights that could enrich my design vision.
I discovered that a key XYZ’s strength lies in its high-touch client relations. I collaborated with various departments to uncover insights from multiple angles and worked with the Market Analysis team to understand how clients were currently receiving and using the market update service.
Additionally, I engaged with the Sales teams to understand how they were pitching the market analysis services to clients and what problems they perceived XYZ as solving for them. Using the PACT Analysis framework, I synthesized the different perspectives and expertise into a comprehensive picture of our users. This helped me to identify key personas and their unique challenges.
- Market Analysts at XYZ are responsible for conducting in-depth market analysis on European energy markets, producing detailed monthly reports (EEMM), and providing personalized market update calls for VIP clients. They use a variety of data sources and analytical tools to gather and process information, ensuring the accuracy and relevance of their insights.
- Market Analysts follow a structured workflow involving data collection, analysis, report generation, and client interaction. They spend a significant portion of their time preparing for and conducting market update calls, which includes data analysis, creating presentations, and coordinating with clients.
- Market Analysts’ primary challenges include managing a high workload due to increasing demand for personalized updates, coordinating and scheduling calls, and dealing with inefficiencies in the current workflow. They also face pressure to deliver timely and accurate insights while balancing multiple tasks and deadlines.
- Originators at XYZ engage with clients to negotiate and secure supply agreements. They manage GTCs and contractual documents and target specific market demands to optimize client offerings, among other tasks.
- Originators frequently interact with clients to understand their needs and offer tailored solutions. A crucial part of their role is getting feedback from clients and using this feedback to improve offerings and close business deals.
- Originators face the challenge of staying updated with the latest market trends and insights to effectively engage with clients. They need timely and accurate market analysis to design innovative financial products and negotiate supply agreements. Managing a large volume of contractual documents and ensuring all terms are met can be time-consuming and complex.
- VIP Clients have access to the monthly Energy Market Report and benefit from personalized calls with analysts. These clients rely on XYZ’s high-quality market analysis to inform their strategic decisions and stay ahead in the energy market.
- VIP Clients use the monthly Energy Market Report for detailed market trends and forecasts. They appreciate the personalized calls for tailored insights and the opportunity to ask specific questions. These interactions help them understand market dynamics better and make informed decisions.
- VIP Clients face challenges in coordinating and scheduling calls with analysts, which can be time-consuming and complex. They need timely and flexible access to market updates to react quickly to market changes. The current process may not always fit into their busy schedules, leading to missed insights and opportunities.
- Regular Clients have access to the monthly Energy Market Report report but do not receive personalized calls. They depend on XYS’s market analysis to support their operational decisions and maintain competitiveness in the energy market.
- Regular Clients use the monthly Energy Market Report to stay informed about market trends and forecasts. The report helps them understand broader market movements and adjust their operations accordingly. They value the detailed and comprehensive nature of the report.
- Regular Clients sometimes feel disadvantaged compared to VIP clients due to the lack of personalized insights and one-to-one calls. They require accessible and timely updates to keep pace with the fast-moving market.
By engaging with stakeholders and clients, I was able to gather a wealth of insights that informed the design principles and strategic direction for the project.
Key research findings
Design Sprint
The design sprint was focused on addressing the key challenges identified during the research and discovery phase. The primary goals of the design sprint were:
Enhance digital delivery of Market Analysis services
Develop new digital formats to complement the existing European Energy Markets Monthly (EEMM) report and personalized analyst calls.
Increase Scalability and Efficiency
Create solutions that reduce the workload on the Market Analysis Team, making the delivery process more efficient and scalable. This included designing workflows and tools that allow for the quick and easy production and distribution of market updates.
Improve client and analyst’s experience:
Provide a seamless and intuitive user experience for both VIP and regular clients accessing market updates, ensuring that the solution offers the same level of detail and personalization that clients value in the current system while reducing analyst’s workload.
Validate the feasibility and acceptance of the potential solutions among both clients and analysts.
Design Sprint Outcome
Testing outcomes
We conducted prototype testing with 8 originators and 10 clients to gather feedback and validate our design proposal. This crucial step provided insights and confirmed the solution’s viability, determining whether the project would advance to the MVP phase.
Originators (8):
Clients (10):
Delivery
Our team finally moved on to building the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This phase was critical in transforming our validated prototypes into a functional product that could be tested and refined in real-world conditions. The MVP development involved close collaboration with two developers and a project manager (PM).
| MVP SCOPE | PARTLY IN MVP SCOPE | NOT IN MVP SCOPE |
|---|---|---|
| Content production / integration on Customer Portal – Video production. – Leverage Vimeo platform for video upload and chapter definition. – Develop form in Admin to link video and upload slide-deck, EEMM Report, expiry date. – Develop web page (Customer): Portal containing video, chapters, slide-deck, report, expired banner. – Market new feature through banner announcement, dashboard and menu integration within Customer portal. | Notification – Design e-mail template. – E-mail notification will be sent out manually. Permission configuration – Customer permissions managed manually via Customer Portal Support Page | Q&A Webinar Session |
| Book your Analyst – Leverage MS Bookings to schedule meetings. – Integrate link to MS Bookings on the web page containing video. | ||
| Analytics – Track user behaviour and usage metrics. – Integrate Vimeo, Azure and Hotjar services for tracking purposes. |
My roles at this phase
- Collaborated with the PM to outline the project milestones from a UX perspective.
- Assisted in creating a comprehensive requirements document and diagrams focusing on user experience aspects.
- Ensured user needs and pain points identified during the research and design sprint phases were reflected in the requirements.
- Designed wireframes and prototypes.
- Created detailed design specifications and assets to ensure developers understood the design intent.
- Led design walkthroughs with the development team to clarify user experience goals and design elements.
- Coordinated with stakeholders for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to validate the MVP against UX requirements.
- Collected and analyzed feedback from UAT sessions to identify usability issues.
- Worked on iterative improvements to address identified UX issues and enhance user satisfaction.
- Collected feedback from initial users focusing on the user experience aspects.
- Prioritized UX issues and feature requests based on user feedback.
- Implemented design changes and improvements to address user concerns and enhance usability.
- Conducted additional user testing to validate the effectiveness of implemented changes.
Final designs
