Con Edison operates and maintains one of the world’s largest energy delivery systems. Founded in 1823 as the New York Gas Light company, their electric, gas, and steam service now provides energy for the 10 million people who live in New York City and Westchester County.
14,000+ Full-time Employees
10+ Million Customers
The Problem
Con Edison employees lacked a standardized, centralized tool for redlining documents, used to document & share in-progress/completed work. This resulted in inaccurate documentation which has a direct impact on safety.
The Challenge
Create a 0 to 1 Drawing Tool that enables Con Edison employees to document, save, and share their Electric Operations work across the organization.
Team—
Rufai Ahmad
Product Owner
Frances Lachowicz
Product Design Lead
Deodat Rupall
Tech Lead
Arnob Hridoy,
Prasad Vemula,
Front End Developers
Digvijoy Mohapatra
Back-End Developer
My Role—
Senior UI Designer
Deliverables—
User Interview Scripts
User Research
User Experience
Design Thinking Workshop
Hi-Fidelity Designs
Prototypes
Usability Testing
Design QA
Timeline—
February 2023 - June 2023
Discovery
User Interviews
We conducted remote discovery sessions via teams with potential users of the CCL Drawing Tool. I was responsible for creating the interview scripts and conducting all of the interviews, with support from the Product Design & User Experience Leads.
Key Insights
The team and I identified 3 key insights from the discovery sessions:
Some groups, especially mechanics use pen and paper to document completed work.
There is no centralized tool for creating/updating drawings.
Safety incidents can occur from incorrect documentation.
Defining User Groups
We narrowed down two user groups - Work Organizers & Underground Supervisors to develop the tool for. We also explored use cases, features, benefits, challenges, and existing tools that were in use.
Personas & Journey Maps
I created personas and journey maps for our stakeholder groups to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Innovation Workshop
We held a remote innovation workshop with our two key user groups to help facilitate brainstorming of their ideal application. I was responsible for a Lighting Talk at the beginning of the presentation to help spark the participant’s imagination and help set the tone for brainstorming activities.
Workshop Insights
The Innovation workshop helped us identify the ideal drawing tool for both user groups. These are the top 3 themes, per user group, discovered during the I Like, I Wish, I Wonder activity.
Work Organizers
Layers to allow different departments annotate the same file
Centralized place to save, edit and share drawings
Versioning/History of each file
Underground Supervisors
Predefined templates so workers can easily and efficiently document their work
Gestures to generate redline symbols
Standardized annotations to prevent illegible shorthand markings that are currently being used - which leads to confusion
Feature Prioritization Surveys
After the Innovation Workshop, I created and sent out a Feature Prioritization Survey to all of the participants. They were asked to rank, in order of importance, key features of their ideal drawing tool.
The responses helped guide the team in defining the MVP.
MVP Definition
Based on responses to the Feature Prioritization survey and key insights identified during discovery sessions I worked with the Product Owner, Product Design and Tech Leads to define the MVP.
Design
Work Organizer (Desktop)
The desktop version of the drawing tool gives Work Organizers the ability to import M&S plates and work diagrams. They can easily document work completed and work to be done. The drawing can be easily saved to a storage account and accessed by supervisors who manage mechanics and by other departments within the organization such as Engineering and Planning.
Underground Mechanics (Mobile)
The drawing tool gives Underground Mechanics the ability to select premade templates of structure diagrams such as manholes. They can easily document their work immediately by annotating the diagram with standardized symbols and text to ensure improved accuracy. The drawing can be easily saved to a storage account and accessed by their supervisor.
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Drawing Tool MVP - Dashboard
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Drawing Tool MVP - Interface
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Drawing Tool MVP - Collapsable Toolbar
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Drawing Tool MVP - Select Template
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Drawing Tool MVP - Template
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Drawing Tool MVP - Pan Feature
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Drawing Tool MVP - Redlining - Shape Tool
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Drawing Tool MVP - Redlining Shape Tool
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Drawing Tool MVP - Redlining Shape Tool
Testing
Typically our team validates our designs via individual usability testing sessions via teams. Unfortunately, due to ongoing internal training, our user groups had to attend along with out-of-sync work schedules, and was difficult to validate the MVP designs.
First, we tried two group sessions for each of our user groups, but that wasn’t as successful as we had hoped. I came up with the idea of recording walkthroughs of the MVP design prototypes and sending them to the respective user groups along with a 4-question survey that they could view and respond to in their free time. It wasn’t the most ideal usability testing method, but it was successful and well-received.
CCL Drawing Tool - MVP - Mobile Usability Testing Video
CCL Drawing Tool - MVP - Desktop Usability Testing Video
Usability Testing Results
Based on Usability testing sessions that were conducted a large percentage of users felt the new tool was easier to use than what they are using today to redline documents and are highly likely to use the tool when it’s released.
“I love that it has everything I would need to edit a document.”
“I think it’s a good tool. Simple and straightforward.”
“I like that we have the ability to avoid using paper.”
“I like that I can have it on my phone”
“Seems easy to use. I like the user functions. I like that I can access my document at any point in its process and also share it with other departments across Con Edison.”
Impact
A full digital solution that eliminated the need for old-school pen and paper, enabled cross-department access & collaboration on all documents created in the Drawing Tool, and increased productivity by 70%.