Summary
Our work with National Grid was part of a broader Digital Transformation.
Prior to On My Way, all of National Grid’s field force was managed by messy paper processes - it takes 77 days in general for a paper job packet to mail from one barn to the next for the necessary sign-off. The organization previously attempted to solve the problem through fragmented IT solutions, but these tools were never fully embraced by field workers or executive leadership.
With On My Way, we introduced a new digital way of working that empowered digital product teams to build trust and adoption with the field force - A digital field force app, eliminating paper, improving data quality, and increasing visibility into the field force.
In terms of overall impact this year, OMW and our portfolio of digital products have exposed 200+ National Grid employees to Digital ways of working, generated an estimated $55M in recurring annual benefits from our digital products, and helped attract nearly 50 digital hires to the organization. Last but not least, our combined efforts have helped drive 200k metric tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. And recently, On My Way was awarded National Grid’s prestigious Chairman's Award under the category of ‘Growing our organizational capability for business impact.
Role
Lead Product Designer
User Researcher
Deliverables
User Interview
Information Architecture
User Flow
Wireframe
Prototype
Live Product (MVP, Alpha, Beta, Production)
Design System
Strategic & Agile Process
Team Structure
How We Started – Hack-a-Future
In October 2019, we hosted a Hack-a-Future workshop, a week-long, immersive ideation session held at BCG Digital Venture.
During this week, join teams members from the client and BCG /DV will generate a large number of tech-enabled products, services, and business ideas that could drive growth.
The primary goal of the Hack-a-Future is to define opportunity areas for further exploration.
“How might we optimize work and resource planning to unlock efficiencies?“
NG is one of the world’s largest investor-owned energy companies, committed to delivering electricity and gas safely, reliably and efficiently to the customers and communities they serve.
In the U.S., NG serves more than 20 million customers throughout New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
User Pain Points
After Hack-a-Future, we moved forward one of the eight ideas – We are validating On My Way, a digital tool to schedule, receive, and closeout jobs. Empowering our workforce to make decisions in the field, accomplish more work, and keep customers up to date on progress along the way.
We identified one major friction addressed - Job scheduling & assignment is highly manual, which led to the following challenges:
Process inefficiencies: Crews have limited visibility into overall job availability
Poor data accuracy: 1/3 engineering designs differ from field conditions; ~200K critical job data errors
High administrative burden: ~77 days for job closeout; ~$8M outstanding assets waiting to be capitalized
Convoluted IT Environment: 10 different platforms used for scheduling and coordination
Target Users / User Research
We visited the field to understand the context deeper, identifying 4 main roles included in the process: line worker, trouble worker, supervisor and clerk.
Service Blueprint
We identified and created a diagram that visualizes the relationships between different components — people, systems, and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints in a job journey: how it starts and ends.
Product Roadmap
Our product roadmap to achieve vision: 6 features prioritized for MVP.
MVP Definition
Our MVP will empower the field force to pick up convenient filler jobs.
User Interview & Pilot Testing
After creating a clickable prototype, we visited our field force workers to get their feedback and continue iterating product. Once we developed MVP, we did 2 pilot testings with 20 users in 3 locations. Our goal is to test core 4 hypothesis with a simplified product.
Field workers will understand how OMW fits into their daily workflows
Field workers can see all necessary job details in the summary card on smart map
Field workers can find nearby filler jobs on smart map and click to view details
Field workers can claim a job and fill out a full digital job packet
The outcomes is significant and insightful. We digitalized 38 jobs and 13 of them are completed via On My Way. We’ve learned 12 key takeaways, including 4 validated, 5 concerns, and 3 opportunities. To continue developing better product for our users, we define the features needed to be improved, prioritized and updated in sprint planning.
UXUI - Field Force Worker
On My Way is a job management tool that enables Electric Field Operations to assign, claim, and complete jobs online while giving supervisors real time visibility to job status, priority, and quickly address urgent customer needs.
UXUI - Supervisor
Design System
Responsive Design
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
“This was easy. It’s simple to use.” “I’m not computer literate and if I can do this anyone can.”
Branding – The broader vision of Nation Grid Digital
NG Digital’s EBU strategic objective is to deliver a sustainable step-change in efficiency, affordability, and ease for our customers while transforming
our business to deliver clean energy and new value opportunities to our customers.
As for any digital product brand, for On My Way it is important to ask ourselves...
How does our logo/brand fit into a broader long-term offering of EBU digital products?
How recognizable and differentiated is our logo on an app icon and other branded materials?
How can we tell the story of across our product experience to improve adoption and manage change?
Our approach to defining the branded product experience
Defining the product strategy
Establishing the brand name and visual system
Communicating & rolling out
What’s Next
We have made progress with the back-end integration work to get the job details in real-time. We will continue increasing user engagement across New York and New England and building excitement for OnMyWay.
