Solar installations on a digital platform evaluated with a user-centered approach

Abstract: The main goal of the project and partnership between STUNS and Uppsala county council is to increase the use of renewable solar energy by helping potential investors get relevant and objective information from solar installations in use. This information is provided on a public web page with open data. This thesis takes a user-centered approach to evaluate the web page developed by STUNS and Uppsala county council. It also describes the development of a prototype for comparing solar panels and other techniques used at the solar installations. Information about the usability of the web page was gathered with semi-structured interviews with three people representing target groups for the web page. Two people represented public property owners and one represented researchers of renewable energy.The results from the interviews showed a big need for improvementsto the web page. Some improvements requested were a clearer purpose and a more attractive, understandable and user-friendly web page.All of the interviewees also requested more cost-related information on the web page. To summarize, a lot of improvements were needed before the web page could be seen as a valuable resource thatfulfills its purpose. The prototype help users compare solar panels used at the solar installations. It was evaluated and tested on users and the tests evaluated the usability and functionalities of the prototype by having the users perform different predefined tasks. To summarize, the prototype was easy to use, had an understandable and clean design that could look more modern. Five out of seven users solved all the tasks in the user tests. Future developments of the prototype could be to integrate it with the rest of the webpage, to make it possible to also compare other aspects ofpage, to make it possible to also compare other aspects ofinstallations such as inverters and whole solar installations.