Service orders
Enable messages to be sent and received from the market.
Sprint
7 Months
Team
Product designer (Me), product manager, front and back end engineers, client stakeholders.
The project
I designed a tool for our client that enables agents to send service orders to market. This includes jobs for the distributor to re-energise and de-energise a property. The systems that the agents lacked error prevention, I implemented two key features to tackle these problems.
My responsibilities
I led the discovery of service orders, facilitated workshops with product managers and engineers for scope alignment, designed wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs, user research and usability testing, managed stakeholder feedback and iterations.
The challenge
This project involved a new client without a formal user research process, so I relied on their product managers and energy experts for industry and user insights. Our organisation restructured into a full-stack team, working more closely with the backend team. This required establishing ways of working to ensure backend development supported front-end design.
Design sprint
I led a design sprint with product managers and engineers, defining the problem space, finalising the scope, and using Crazy 8’s sketches to align on the vision.
User Journey
I mapped the user journey, sketched initial designs on paper, and created mocks. After sharing them with stakeholders, product managers, and engineers, we identified issues with service order timing – if two orders were in flight, one risked rejection.
Service map
To align front-end design with backend development, I created a service map outlining system behaviour when a service order is sent, reaches the gateway, and reaches the participant. This identifies status types, errors, and completion timings. I mapped the user journey, sketched initial designs on paper, and created mocks. After sharing them with stakeholders, product managers, and engineers, we identified issues with service order timing, if two orders were in flight, one risked rejection.
Starting point
The initial design started from the homepage outside the customer account. I later learned most agents access service orders from the customer account, though the original journey supports customers without one. I then created an alternative journey starting from the customer account page.
Activity history
The service order table displays status changes, allowing agents to track when an order is sent, accepted, canceled, rejected and other status types. Initially, canceled orders were placed below the original, but this added development complexity. Instead, I designed a modal for status history, repurposing an existing component from another team, improving usability while reducing table clutter.
User testing
I conducted interviews and usability tests with five agents, and learned that they rated their current system between 7 and 4 out of 10. I provided a clickable prototype and assigned tasks to raise a service order.
“I rated their current system between 7 and 4 out of 10”
The agents were pleased with the ‘Cancellation Pending’ message, their current system does not notify agents if a cancellation is pending, it is a known problem where agents raise another service order which then gets rejected because the ‘cancellation’ has not been accepted.
Another common problem is agent’s send multiple cancellations because there is no system feedback, they think the cancellation was not sent so they send another. I hid the cancel button once a cancellation is sent to prevent this error.
The agents completed all tasks and gave it a rating of 9 out of 10, one agent quoted, “what would have taken me 2-3 minutes has now taken me 30-40 seconds”.
“What would have taken me 2-3 minutes has now taken me 30-40 seconds.”
When tasked with raising a ‘de-energisation’ service order, agents missed the message ‘De-energisation unavailable on accounts with life support’, with one mistaking it for a technical issue. As a result they would have to revert to the old system to complete the task. I placed the copy in a notification to improve visibility.
Iteration
When tasked with raising a ‘de-energisation’ service order, agents missed the message ‘De-energisation unavailable on accounts with life support’, with one mistaking it for a technical issue. As a result they would have to revert to the old system to complete the task. I placed the copy in a notification and had the ‘de-energisation’ pre-selected improve visibility.
Prototype
This video demonstrates the journey to create and cancel a service order.