Designing an electricity order creation workflow for novice and expert users

Abstract: Electricity procurement is a complex task for most companies. Knowing how much electricity to buy and when, in an attempt to get a low price can be stressful. There are tools to simplify this task, and one of these is a web based tool, here referred to as SystemX. SystemX simplifies electricity procurement through a set of different functions. One function in SystemX is the electricity order creation workflow, in which users can create orders for electricity to be delivered at a chosen time in the future. The workflow was thought to be complex and heavily geared towards expert users, and even expert users needed help and consultation at times. This master thesis focuses on creating a new design for the order creation workflow in SystemX and to make it more usable for novice and expert users. The methodology in the thesis is based on the double diamond model, which is a model based on user-centered design. This model ensured that the user was kept in focus throughout the process, from the initial interviews to the final testing of Hi-Fi prototype. The model consists of four stages; discover, define, develop, and deliver. The process began with the discover stage, in which information about the current system was collected. This was done through interviewing two current users of SystemX, finding out their needs, and what they think could be improved in the order creation workflow. The current workflow was also evaluated through a heuristics evaluation and a usability test with both novice and expert users. The main problems and areas of improvement were compiled during the define stage, by analyzing the gathered information from the previous stage. A Lo-Fi prototype was created and iterated on during the develop stage. The final Lo-Fi prototype was tested during usability tests with both novice and expert users. Based on feedback from the Lo-Fi prototype usability tests, a final Hi-Fi prototype was created during the deliver stage. The Hi-Fi prototype was also tested using usability tests with novice and expert users. In order to compare the usability between the current version of SystemX and the Hi-Fi prototype, a system usability score was collected from the test users. The result indicates a great improvement in usability for the novice users, and a slight increase in usability for the expert users. A clear next step is to implement the design in SystemX, and evaluate which problems come up when developing a real web application using the proposed design as a foundation.