My work at EagleView has evolved from encompassing all aspects of design in the early days to a concentrated focus on TrueDesign's user interface and interaction in later years.
Over the course of 6 months, Product Team and UX conducted a comprehensive analysis. Our findings underscored the pivotal role of technical challenges in significantly impacting the overall experience of TrueDesign 1.0. As part of our ongoing efforts, our objective is to address these technical issues strategically, aiming to enhance the overall performance.
Problem Statement
Up to 68% of solar professionals report loss of sales due to change as much as $2,500 per job
Solar installers spend an average of 3 hours on each small rooftop solar project for site surveys. However, the existing survey methods often lead to inaccurate data collection, resulting in shading miscalculations and misjudgments of site characteristics. These issues contribute to flawed designs, pricing fluctuations, and reduced customer satisfaction, posing challenges to solar businesses.
How did we get there?
The complexity of a professional solar design tool like TrueDesign is deceptively high. Behind every element lies days, weeks or even months of deeply involved product development involving a large group of people.
At the time of writing this, the app can be divided into two major surfaces:
Editor - where you view, edit and share your designs.
Presentation - where customers can visualize their digital twin also see the production and related constraints.
The Editor is the most complex, with several parts to it which you normally don’t see or experience until some certain condition is met. For example, if you don’t have edit permissions to a file, you will get Presentation mode UI. It includes 41 predefined roles based on user requirements and controls, offering controls that modify canvas tools and interactions, tuned towards Property panel.
3D environment enables users to visualize projects in a realistic 3D environment based on a Digital Surface Model (DSM) derived from our high-resolution aerial imagery, and so on.
Obstruction-removal assists users in modeling potential shade improvements by adjusting trees, chimney, and related penetrations.
There is also a versions feature to create multiple system under a roof,
Sharing & permissions configurator
The Presentation mode is a simple feature that displays and delivers information to the end user allowing them to visualize the digital twin within a blend of 3D environment and textures. It is easier to relate to as it follows a traditional 'view-only' approach, ensuring that only relevant information is displayed enhancing simplicity and relevance for the user.
Feature Development
While enhancing TD 2.0, Our team (Solar ART) has been diligently working on incorporating new features driven by customer requests and market needs. This collaborative effort involves the Product team working closely with Marketing and Engineering to shape a roadmap for the upcoming release. I've been actively brainstorming new features, gathering insights from various sources, and documenting them on Confluence, Miro, and FigJam (my favorite ❤️).
As my role evolved over time, I found myself in a dynamic position where along with other designers, I was closely engaged in usability analysis. Our activities encompassed heuristic evaluation, providing insights that fueled our brainstorming sessions focused on creating a better experience for end-users. Simultaneously, a significant portion of my involvement revolved around feature development, adding depth and breadth to our product's capabilities.
Editing obstructions was probably my most impactful innovation at EagleView. At this time exiting tools and competitors had some capabilities to add and remove obstructions but nothing that was usable for composition or even modeling real world digital twin experience
Working during the research phase large part of my time was mainly spend on working sessions with development team, leading the design for our editor and figuring out what we should build and how we should build it. Basically it all starts with an enabler in Scale Agile and they (ENG) collaborate with UX to check if things are achievable or not.
Here is the basic process I follow working on this feature:
What’re we trying to solve?
The challenge is to optimize solar access for a roof facet aligned towards the sun. However, this objective is hindered by a roof obstruction mounted on the facet, causing shadows to be cast on a specific area. The task is to find a solution that maximizes solar access despite the presence of the obstruction, ensuring efficient utilization of solar energy for the given roof facet.
Target Users
Solar Designer
Designed in
Sept, 2023
Release in
Nov, 2023
State of Business
Product & sales team regularly analyzing sales, user engagement, and customer satisfaction and make data-driven decisions. US construction industry continues to grapple with numerous interconnected challenges that have led to unprecedented spikes in construction costs over the past two years which directly impact solar business revenue perhaps it is still growing by +1% month over month, +3% Year over year.
All this is because of amazing sales rep we have in EagleView for Solar art.
Achievements and growth factors
Usage Surge: TrueDesign's enhanced features boosted YTD usage by 66%.
Revenue Projection: Estimated to generate $42m in 2024, signaling robust financial success.
Order Growth: Achieved a 20% increase, delivering 70,000 orders in 2023 from an initial 10,000.
Global User Base: Expanded to 60K+ active users globally post-enhanced design.
Engagement Metrics: Users spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform daily.
Strategic Integrations: Integrated with 10+ market players including Tesla, SumoQuote, and SalesRabbit.
Recognition: Won the prestigious Spotted Eagle Award for TrueDesign's development efforts.