Stormcenter
Redesigning the utility outage map for mobile accessibility and clearer outage updates.
ROLE
Product Designer
SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT
When a storm takes out power, people reach for their phone. They want two things: what’s happening at my house, and when do I get power back? If the map can’t answer, they call the utility and during a multi-city outage, that call volume becomes its own emergency.
StormCenter is the outage map utilities license to answer those questions for their customers. It is a responsive web app, not an install, and it carries a utility’s entire service territory. I led the research and design of its redesign.
Tools used
Research & Analysis
The fastest honest evidence was already public. I took the five largest utility clients and went through their social feeds, collecting customer complaints, frustrations and the specific language people used during outages. The product manager opened up the utilities’ own usage data alongside it.
Design decisions
Utilities couldn’t promise a restoration time. Customers needed one anyway.
A crew cannot estimate an unplanned outage until they are physically on site. And a wrong estimate is worse than none it produces exactly the angry calls and public backlash utilities are trying to avoid. The business pressure was to publish nothing until certain.
Customers have one question, and silence is how trust breaks.
Rather than treat it as a binary publish a number or show nothing I designed the map to communicate certainty progressively. Each state says what is known and names what isn’t, so an absent estimate reads as information rather than a broken field.
REPORTED
We've confirmed an outage in your area.
No estimation yet.
PENDING ASSESSMENT
A crew is on the way
We'll have an estimation once the crew arrives.
CREW ASSESSING
A crew is on site assessing the cause.
Estimation expected.
RESTORING
Repairs are underway
Power expected to back soon and a possible time estimation.
Wireframes
I designed and tested feature by feature rather than waiting for a complete redesign. Each module validated and tested with the customers.
Final product
I designed and tested feature by feature rather than waiting for a complete redesign. Each module validated and tested with the customers.
Impact
+60%
of tested users found status, cause and restoration time unaided
41
participants across usability and preference studies
10+
utilities adopted or upgraded in the first rollout
40%
of U.S. and Canadian households reachable through the platform
Client adoption and upgrades are still in progress. More than 60% of tested users found their outage status, cause and estimated restoration without contacting anyone the behaviour the redesign was aiming at.
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