All work

Case study · AEP · 2018

Putting a utility in customers’ pockets — AEP’s first customer service app.

Until this app, AEP customers could only pay online, by mail or at a third-party counter. Accenture partnered with American Electric Power to design and build its first iOS and Android app; I led UX, research and creative direction.

AEP mobile app account screen showing amount due, a Make a Payment button and outage status
Role
UX Lead · Research · Creative direction
Team
Accenture pod + AEP UX & developers
Platforms
iOS & Android
Outcome
AEP’s first customer service app; my persona template became AEP’s standard
  • Persona creation
  • Design-thinking workshops
  • UX inside agile
  • Iterative usability testing
  • Accessibility testing
  • A/B testing
  • Pairing with developers
Three AEP app screens: pay your bill, account summary with balance and outage status, and usage over time

01 — The challenge

A first-ever app, built by a team that had never shipped one.

AEP had no in-house iOS or Android developers, so we staffed the pod with Accenture specialists while upskilling AEP developers to maintain the app after launch. AEP’s UX team was a shared service, so ideation, research and testing were split between AEP and Accenture.

AEP was also a waterfall organization. We introduced development sprints — and design sprints alongside them.

02 — Key constraint

11 states. 11 business units. One app.

Each AEP operating company runs independently, with its own regulatory and compliance rules and its own mix of services. Not every feature could ship to every region, so the design had to flex by business unit.

03 — Start with the user

Personas that picked the MVP’s audience.

We targeted customer segments that rarely engaged with AEP’s websites but had high tech affinity. I created a persona template for the project that went on to become AEP’s standard for persona work.

Persona sheet: Engaged Households — Jamie Wilson, HR director, with goals, pain points, apps and behavioral traits
Persona sheet: Busy Households — Carol Morgan, investment consultant, with goals, pain points, apps and behavioral traits
Persona sheet: All Digital — Brian Holt, athletic trainer, with goals, pain points, apps and behavioral traits

04 — UX inside agile

A design board that stayed a sprint ahead.

Because AEP was new to agile, we got to define how UX should work inside it. While developers ran their sprints, the design team kept its own board, so we stayed organized and kept a steady flow of considered work ready for development.

A team member adding sticky notes to a wall-sized notifications board Design kanban board with Backlog, In Progress and Done columns

05 — UX + dev fusion

Developers in the room, early and often.

We pulled developers into design discussions to understand technical constraints, held one-off flow conversations, and ran workshops where they could question our proposed designs. Their perspective was invaluable.

Whiteboard of How Might We questions covered in sticky notes Designers, developers and stakeholders reviewing flows on a wall Whiteboard registration flow: find account, confirm access, register, validation, success Ease-of-use user stories on sticky notes: fewer decisions, minimum steps, pre-populated fields

06 — Sketches

From developer conversations to a biometric sign-in flow.

Once I understood the technical constraints, I sketched how signing in with biometrics should feel: first-time setup, the prompt, and turning it on or off in settings.

Three hand-drawn sketches of the biometric sign-in flow and its settings

07 — Wireframes

Translating business processes into mobile flows.

Every existing AEP process had to become a mobile experience. We mapped how each one worked today, designed the app version, then usability-tested it to validate the decisions. Below: the outage reporting flow.

  1. Find your account by address

    1 · Find your account

  2. Location permission prompt to help report the outage

    Location permission

  3. Verify your account by choosing a service address

    2 · Verify your account

  4. Contact information for the outage ticket

    3 · Contact details

  5. Describe your outage, with checks for breaker reset and neighbors’ power

    Describe the outage

  6. Comments and directions to help crews find you

    4 · Help crews find you

  7. Thank-you screen with outage ticket number and a status link

    Ticket created

Usability test sessions with participants using the app prototype on phones

08 — Usability & accessibility testing

A testing cadence built into every design sprint.

We tested for accessibility as well as usability. A visually impaired colleague in our building volunteered for our accessibility study, which shaped how the app worked with assistive technology.

09 — A/B testing

When the data said “inconclusive,” we kept iterating.

Two competing designs for reporting an outage went through several rounds of A/B testing. Results kept coming back inconclusive, so after each round I adjusted the design based on what we’d learned and tested again, until one design clearly earned confidence.

Design A: find your account with address, phone or account number tabs
Design A
Design B: address-first account lookup with error recovery and phone search
Design B
Final report-an-outage flow: a stepped find-your-account screen shown on three phones
The final outage flowIt performed well on both iOS and Android.

10 — Outcomes

1st

AEP customer service app, on iOS and Android

Standard

My persona template became AEP’s standard for persona work

Agile

Design sprints introduced alongside dev sprints at a waterfall org