Remote generator monitoring for homeowners
Remote fleet management for
dealers
&
🏆 Kohler Energy's 2023 & 2024 Product Innovation Award Winner
As the Lead Product Designer at KOHLER Energy, I owned these projects from early product strategizing with business stakeholders, user research & market analysis to the final in app User Experience and User Interface deliverables.
The KOHLER Energy Management mobile application is the consumer counterpart to the KOHLER Energy Management PRO app for dealers. These 2 apps seamlessly synch data from the cloud, allowing both dealers and homeowners to monitor their generators.
Where it began
OnCue Plus generator management system was an outdated application that was over 10 years old and did not receive regular updates.
The key issues were:
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One of many digital products used by users requiring a unique login id
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2 main user groups using the same platform (dealers/technicians and homeowners)
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Lack of visual hierarchy of information making critical data hard to find
My design process
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User surveys, metrics & customer feedback. What do customers like & dislike about the current product?
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Market analysis. What are similar companies offering for digital products for similar user groups?
⚡
Ideate with internal stakeholders on business solutions that would make sense for our business & target audience.
💻
Design, test & build a new suite of digital products that fixes current frustrations, delights users, offers new insights.
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Follow up with users to make sure product meets user and market expectations. Take new ideas to backlog.
The outcome
2 new digital platforms that:
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Utilize a new, stable cloud architecture
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Optimize data based on specific user groups
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Offer enhanced, mobile first, user specific features
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Showcase a modern UI matching the current market
Phase 1:
New cloud architecture
One of the biggest complaints from users was that the data and app uptime was unreliable. Connection issues between the generators and the cloud was causing data to often become unavailable in app. This was due to the old software relying on a cloud solution that was never meant to support the data load our software had grown to. So in addition to building a new, intuitive front end product, I worked with software leaders to build a solution that ensured the new cloud would support a seamless transition for users to the new platform and continued cloud connection for legacy and the next generation of products.
Phase 2:
A new dealer experience
Instead of having 1 digital product supporting 2 very different user groups, the next phase was breaking out servicing dealers and technicians from homeowners and getting each user group into their own respective app. This allowed us as a company to offer continued tailored feature development and messaging for each user group. This included more robust remote control features only skilled technicians could safely operate that was unable to be offered before due to the lack of user separation. I would also be able to now monitor and target user actions and feedback by specific user group.
Phase 3:
A new homeowner experience
A new app for the servicing dealers was prioritized first as this was the user group most affected from having an app with unreliable data. Additionally, the homeowner experience would be a "lite" version of the PRO app, removing highly customizable remote control features needed for servicing while offering simplified, easy to understand data. Homeowners were also given touch points driving them to connect with a dealer for any further questions they may have right within the app.
Phase 4:
Training & Tracking
As part of the continuous development, I helped organize and lead trainings at both in person conferences and online webinars that helped support our customers with app releases and trainings. This included speaking and providing product demos to groups of over 100 people at a time.
I also helped ensure our team was capturing useful user data used to improve product features such as engagement and retention rates, click through rates and more through Google Analytics and Firebase.