Loop Optimise
Product design of Loop Optimise, an AI-powered webapp which will buy and store a user's solar energy when it's cheap, and sell it back to the grid when it's expensive.The Loop Optimise product has evolved over several years to where it is now. It stared as a proof of concept by one of Loop’s data scientists, who created an algorithm which wold control a user’s a battery in order for that user to earn money by storing energy when it’s cheap, and selling it back to the grid when it’s expensive. This is complex idea, and challenging to explain to a user how it works.
I started off doing ideation with some of my data scientist colleague, iterating many ideas and building on some of our ideas from Loop, as well as using the same base design system.
The main goal was how to explain to the user what the value of Loop Optimise is, and then onboard them by asking them some details about their battery and solar setup. We start the journey with an animated example (shown above) which simply outlines the sell high/buy low proposition.
After that, the onboarding looks and feels similar to the Loop onboarding process, but we ask markedly different questions. We did a lot of user testing around this, asking users how difficult it was to find some of this information.
The section we tested the most was about the user’s inverter and battery details. We had to find out how to connect to the user’s battery. Every battery manufacturer had their own way of connecting to their battery, so we had to create am adaptable design which would serve multiple battery types.
Once the is was successfully connected to Loop Optimise, it takes a few hours to start gathering the battery’s data, so we had to explain this to the user. The platform itself has been through many iterations, listening to feedback from users in order to make the product easy to understand, and to show the value of Loop Optimise.
The product is not chart or data heavy, it rather shows clearly what the battery is doing. and why it is doing it. The chose to lean into the fact that what Loop Optimise is doing is very complex, so it’s better to show the financial results of using Loop Optimise rather than all the facts and data which some other services bombard a user with.
A key feature is the Tariff Recommender which - based on a user’s unique solar and battery setup - would recommend the exact right tariff for them to be on in order to achieve maximum financial earnings.
The Loop Optimise platform has since been white-labelled so that it can be picked up and adopted by a solar installer. I created an admin-level platform called Optimise which would allow an installer to customise certain aspects of the Loop Optimise platform in order to fit their specific brand, and then onboard their own customers.
Loop Optimise has also been repurposed for use by Utilita as Utilita Optimise. I worked very closely with Utilita’s marketing department in order to ensure that this separate platform met Utilita’s brand requirements.