strategy | human centered design | innovation
A journey to range confidence in electric vehicles
Designing an end-to-end digital journey moving people from EV range anxiety to EV range confidence
Spoiler Alert: resulted 126% increase in EV sales
GOAL
Improve EV adoption by addressing customer's range anxiety
How Might We help customers feel calm & confident in EVs by resolving pain points of “range anxiety?”
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​FROM:
range anxiety, n.
1. the unnerving feeling of not knowing how far you can actually go in your (electric) vehicle.
2. the fear of being stranded somewhere in your (electric) vehicle because you ran out of battery power.
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​TO:​
range confidence, n.
1. the freeing feeling that you can go anywhere you want in your (electric) vehicle.
2. the fearlessness to take your (electric) vehicle on all manner of road trip adventures. ​​
APPROACH
Developing empathy for the EV driver experience
We uncovered EV drivers' fears, workarounds, and habits through the use of ethnographic research: immersion, home visits, ride alongs, social listening, concept cards, and digital prototypes.
A few insights emerged:
1. range anxiety is part of a larger, systems-level dysfunction.
2. driver confidence changes based on the type of trip; roadtrip confidence is a "rite of passage."
3. there is an information mismatch: information from the brand decreases as customer's desire for it increases.
DESIGN STRATEGY
Prioritizing the most impactful concepts to focus on
With so many systems-level issues to address, avoiding boiling the ocean by pursuing multiple concepts can be very challenging.
For this project, I drove alignment on the most impactful concepts to pursue through a collaborative prioritization exercise combining quantitative data and qualitative Likert scale scoring system.
This allowed our team to focus on the top design concepts and was crucial to the project's success.
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SOLUTION
From whiteboard >> prototype >> live website
Aligning on the most impactful opportunity areas allowed us to generate designs across the EV owner's digital journey that would make the biggest improvement in moving users from range anxious to range confident drivers.
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Scrappy whiteboard sketches allowed real-time collaboration on ideas within the team, with several of them (including this one) later going live.
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Our prioritized concepts spanned the most important moments across the EV customer's digital journey, and we also identified design tensions and principles for each concept to ensure the applications of insights weren't lost during final design production.
RESULT
Online range calculator contributed to 126% increase in EV sales since project completion
The web-based range calculator concept was adopted by the Marketing team and is now live!
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Many other design concepts from this project are also found in latest EV models (like the Mach-E) and online materials.
LESSONS LEARNED
Key takeaways
Designing an end-to-end journey without going too wide: because these challenges require multiple solutions to make a sizable impact, it can be incredibly tempting to try to tackle everything all at once. This project required prioritizing at every step of the process: the most impactful moments to address, the most impactful issues in each moment, and the most impactful concepts to solve each issue.
Collaboration for the win: real-time collaboration is best paired with some prep work, and the combination can be incredibly effective. Although each member of the team had a different expertise, including each of us in the research, synthesis, ideation, prioritization, and concept development processes produced more robust ideas and ultimately more impactful solutions. Instead of working alone in prototyping tools and excel spreadsheets, I pushed for scrappy work on whiteboards to enable inclusive collaboration.
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Guidelines for when concepts grow up: outlining design principles and tensions for each concept and how they should be executed based on our research-backed insights helped ensure final designs stayed true to the original intent of the design concept.
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Team: Rachel Williams, John Ferrer, Alexis Begnoche, Julie Turner
Daylight: Noam Zomerfeld, Hannah Mazonson, Rachel Sakai
GenAI Fun!
Using GenAI for a little project fun & swag
Observing people trying to calculate how much range their EV would have based on various actual and perceived factors reminded us of trying to stare into a crystal ball.
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Noam created a logo using GenAI that became a focal point of fun on our team and found it's way onto some post-project swag.