Event Manager

My main focus during my time at AlsoEnergy (later acquired by Stem, Inc.) was the UX for a new product called Event Manager. Event Manager is an alarm tracking system for solar (and later energy storage) sites. I oversaw the key development period from the product’s initial beta release to its general release.

A project of this importance required a lot of user research and usability testing. We conducted numerous user research sessions with beta users and potential customers to understand their needs in the short and long term.

We were lucky to have a beta customer who’s users we could talk to on a regular basis to understand their needs and pain points as the used the beta. Over time, we were able to achieve our goal of making the Event Manager Beta their primary alarm tracking system.

Event Manager's events list view in PowerTrack — *Courtesy of AlsoEnergy*

Role

UI/UX Design & UX Research

Date

2022-2023

Client

AlsoEnergy/ Stem, Inc.

Background

Problem

AlsoEnergy’s customers have relied on the same alarm system, known as Alerts, for years. While it has generally worked well in that time, users have had issues with alerts flooding their inbox because the system isn’t setup for larger, modern solar sites. Additionally, the interface only provides limited actions for alerts. Users familiar with other CMMS software expect features like commenting, detailed audit logs, and operational workflows in their alarm interface. It was time for a new and improved alarm system.

My work with Event Manager was focused on one particular persona: the NOC Operator. In the renewable energy industry, the NOC (Network Operations Center) is where operations and maintenance team monitors their fleet of renewable power plants remotely. The operators monitor for problems on these sites and take action, such as sending a maintenance tech to the site.

Goals

Empower users to quickly prioritize events
Display the impact of an event
Provide pathways to quickly take action on events
Help users understand an event’s status
Provide a comprehensive history of a given event

PowerTrack’s 3.0’s Alerts Interface
*Courtesy of AlsoEnergy*

The Project

This phase of development was focused on the NOC operator persona, so we wanted to tailor the UX to their workflow. The three key parts of the workflow are Prioritize, Understand, and Action the events that represents issues at solar sites. The event manager’s UX is tailored to this workflow and consists of two main views: the Events List, where all events are listed, and the Event Details, where users can find details on a particular event.

Prioritize

The NOC operators monitor a whole fleet of hundreds of solar sites from around the world. Therefore, countless events can show up can show up during a shift. If the operator wants to get anything done, they’ll need to prioritize the events in their queue.

From talking to various NOC operators, we found there were some key metrics in their mental model for prioritizing events. Trying to do this prioritization calculation in your head can be difficult, so users needed a severity score to reduce their cognitive load and prioritizte events quickly.

I used key event metrics, like duration, hardware affected, and power capacity affected, to devise a formula to give each event a score out of 100. I incorporated both user feedback and best practices from the ISA 18.2 Alarm System Management Standard to make the best formula for our users.

Understand

Once the operator has zeroed in on an event to work on, they need a deeper understanding of what is going on. From the Events List, they can navigate to the Event Details page to learn more. Here, they will find information on where this event stands in its life cycle, the root cause of the event and a detailed timeline of what’s been happening onsite.

One of the key asks from users was a breakdown of the fault codes coming from the hardware the event is on. A fault code is the detailed error message from the hardware that explains what’s wrong. A single event can have multiple fault codes, so it’s important to know when and where they are happening. The Event Details page displays the fault codes in full and places their duration on a Gantt chart so users can see the relationships between them.

The Event Details View for an “inverter down” event
*Courtesy of AlsoEnergy*

Action

Once the NOC operator has a clear understanding of what’s happening with an event, they need to take action it. The first thing they’ll usually take is to “Acknowledge” the event, letting other stakeholders know someone is handling it. Users also asked for a “Validated” status to show the event has been double checked by the operator. This workflow is at the core of the NOC team’s daily routine and helps them keep track of progress on resolving events. Users also frequently need to take notes on the event to communicate with teammates about events.

These actions can be taken on the Events Details page, but the busy NOC operators don’t want to go to the details page all the time. So, we provided a side drawer where operators can take actions from the events list page and even action multiple events at once. Speed and efficiency are critical to their day to day operations.

“Acknowledging” an event or adding a note to an event are common actions a user can take from the side drawer.

The Process

When I first started working on the event manager, it had just been released to select beta users. It hadn’t gotten any dedicated UX attention up to this point, but for the next several months, I embedded myself with the developer team to get the UX ready for a general release.

During this time, I conducted hours of user research with beta users and potential future users. While our beta user feedback was invaluable (they were using the product after all), we wanted to avoid creating a product that only worked for this client. So, we reached out to potential users who could provide a different perspective on the solar NOC workflow along with users who fit different persona altogether. This helped us build a robust product that all kinds of NOC operators can use along with their teammates in other roles.

The capable and user-centric developer team deserve a lot of credit for the success of the product. We worked together closely to understand users and technical capabilities to make this product great. We collaborated frequently in brainstorming sessions, technical discussions, and user persona workshops. The close collaboration made us both better and, in turn, made the product better.

Below, you can see various iterations of the Event Manger and details of certain features.

Sticky notes sorted under "responsibilities" and "motivations" — Notes from our team’s Event Manager Persona Workshop

Sticky Notes sorted under "worries" and "teamwork"