EV drivers look for simplicity above all else. If they find themselves with an empty battery, they want to charge it as simply as possible. Since payment is a crucial part of an EV charging session, having multiple payment options is the first point of success to ensure simplicity and customer satisfaction.
In order to increase the amount of payment method options, we were tasked with designing a transaction flow for drivers who use one-time-payment option to charge with a payment kiosk. The payment kiosk would be one of the key touch-points that would enable drivers to start charging, without registering for an app or using a charging tag. Any driver can come and activate the charging process with their payment card.
For this project, there were several challenges that makes it unique:
- A device can be used by many users. Compared to designing for mobile or desktop, designing for a physical payment kiosk is essentially differentiated by the fact that multiple users can have access to this device, at various time when multiple action flows can be active at the same time. How to ensure that each of these user flows can be navigated correctly, how to handle the transition between one flow to another, and what happens when one user decides to not continue with their action and drop the flows, etc. Those are some of the questions that the design needs to address.
- Understand the physical context. Drivers might be using the payment kiosk under bright sunlight or with limited lighting in a dark garage. Outdoor settings prompt a lot more uncontrollable factors that can affect the end user experience and the design solution has to minimise their impact.
- Ensure that legal requirements are met. Both the EU-wide legislation "AFIR" as well as "The Public Charge Point Regulations" in the UK will become effective in 2024. AFIR promotes and regulates clean vehicle infrastructure and enhances EV drivers’ freedom of payment options. Especially in single ad hoc payments and for newcomers to the EV world, a card payment option is considered a valuable addition to the existing payment options.
- Ensure seamless brand experience from digital to physical touch-points.
As the Lead Designer in this project, I was in charge of both the research and visual design areas. Some of the key tasks include:
- Conducted analysis from existing solutions on the market
- Discussed with project managers and other business stakeholders to define the project scope
- Worked with our developers and hardware technical partner to understand the capabilities as well as limitations of the device
- Mapped out the user flows: happy flows & corner cases
- Iterated and validated design concepts
We tested and verified our design concepts with stakeholders extensively before implementing the final solution, which is now available in all Virta Payment Kiosk terminals. Pilot projects showed 20% growth in transactions at chargers with the Payment Kiosk.
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