Piedmont Natural Gas

My Account Dashboard

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Introduction

Piedmont Natural Gas is a utility owned by Duke Energy Corporation. They serve approximately 1 million natural gas customers. Our agile team was tasked with improving the authenticated experience, and reduce calls to the call center.

My Role

I was the lead designer for a newly established Agile team. Our primary focus was the authenticated experience. We worked in 2 week sprints and tackled low hanging fruit first, with the intent to circle back after MVP of each page was achieved.

Approach

Although Piedmont Natural Gas is owned by Duke Energy, It does not have it’s own unique design system. Many of the colors and typography are shared between the two sites. With that foundation, I was able to focus on the layout without having to worry about those smaller details.

Initially we tackled the navigation and and the account switcher. I was also able to convince them to remove some unnecessary copy at the top of the page. This was all implemented within 2 sprints.

Before & After

Original Dashboard

MVP

Dashboard updates after 2 sprints

Future state

Future State Approach

After the initial designs were implemented, I then stated working on the future state of the dashboard.

There were some basic requirements for the new dashboard. The dashboard design must include:

  • Account Summary

  • Billing Programs

  • Marketing cards

  • Billing & Payment History (post MVP)

  • Natural Gas Usage Analysis (post MVP)

This led me to design multiple different layouts with dynamic components that could be switched in and out as the development process allowed. I knew that the Account Summary component was the most important, so I placed it in the upper left hand corner of the page.

Outcome (MVP)

These designs incorporated only what was required for the MVP. This included a slight change to the navigation and the addition of the Billing & Payment Activity component.

 

Outcome (post MVP)

Lastly, I pulled out all the stops and mocked up what the dashboard could look like in the future. This mock up includes many features that have not yet been developed but are in our backlog.

 

Conclusion

This was a fun project that depicts a lot of what I do on a day-to-day as part of an Agile team. I learned a lot about dashboard design best practices and am better equipped to design dashboard UI in the future.