Building an outage scheduling module
Platform: Energy price forecasting
Users: Traders, Energy managers who have control over physical assets that product energy
Identifying Issues & User Goals
Problem: No way for users to schedule in asset outages ⮕ inaccuracies in the forecasting ⮕ users not trusting the forecast
The existing process is 1) not efficient 2) not scalable
It wasn't feasible to integrate their outage system into our software so the next best solution would be to build the most frictionless process for users to inform our software.
User Goal Driven UI Design
Energy outages exists as "full outages" where capacity is dropped to none and "partial outages" where capacity is lowered but exists.
human thought process vs human-computer interaction
Scheduling an Outage
Majority of the outage cases are full outages but I still need a way to capture the partial outages without creating a whole new flow.
Validating assumptions
Prevalence
Technical terms
Technical terms
Outage selection as a reaction
Instead of separating the action into full outage and partial outage, one module handles both cases by using capacity as both an input field for partial outages and indicator of the type of outage.
Outage Indicators
Benefits:
it's less steps to complete the outage scheduling, it takes some of the mental burdence from the user to the software
building and designing one flow
Challenges:
resources it takes to make the module reactive instantaneously to input, especially the save button (✅ from Eng)
Viewing Outages
Outage information in chart tooltips and table
Results & Next Steps
Scheduling outages: implemented as designed
How an outage affects the forecast: chart indicators placed in backlog