Evico
Project Overview
Access to EV Charging for Urban Residents
More and more electric vehicles are appearing on the road, but owning an electrical vehicle is difficult for those who don't own property with a dedicated parking spot and a car charger. Residents of urban apartments have to rely on public charging options, without access to overnight home charging. Evico solves this problem by providing its users with convenient and affordable parking spots with pre-installed charging stations.
My Role
Mobile UX/UI Designer
Duration
4 weeks (153 hours)
Team
Designer - Me
Tools Used
- Figma
- Prototyping
- User Research
- UX/UI Design
Research
Understanding the EV Market Challenges
Market Research
To grasp the scale of the problem, I read market research articles on the current electric vehicle market. My research identified that EVs face several adoption-limiting factors, with the two most important being:
- • The capabilities of the EVs themselves
- • The availability of parking spots with charging infrastructure
EV Limiting Properties
- • Electrical vehicles have a short driving range, mostly suitable to urban environments where the longest trip distances are not more than 60km/day. The longest range car currently on the market is the Tesla Model S with a range of 623 km.
- • In northern countries with cold winters, electric cars lose up to 40% of their range.
- • The charging time of EVs depends on the type of charger and battery used in the car. Average charging times can vary from 30 min to more than 12 hours. The Tesla Model S with a 75 kWh battery can be fully charged in under an hour at a 150 kW Rapid charging station, but it would take 21 hours to get the same charge from a regular residential outlet.
- • Rapid charger is expensive to install since it requires high voltage three phase power.
Infrastructure and Acquisition Problems
- • According to McKinsey, the main limiting factor for the mass adoption of EVs is the relatively low number of existing charging stations.
- • The majority of existing EV owners in the US and Canada live in a house, can afford to install home chargers, have a family income of more than $100k/year, and own the EV as a secondary vehicle.
- • Studies suggest that there could be 120 million EVs on the road by 2030 in the US, China and EU.
- • Basic AC level 1 and level 2 power will overwhelmingly remain the dominant charging technology through 2030, providing from 60 to 80 percent of the energy consumed.
Ideation
Early Ideation Notes
Armed with this framing research, I started to free-write and do basic sketches about how I understood the problem and empathized with the target user: people who want to own an EV but don't have access to the necessary infrastructure.
Ideation page 1
Ideation page 2
Ideation page 3
Ideation page 4
Ideation page 5
Ideation page 6
Define
Defining the Solution
Armed with this framing research, I started to free-write and do basic sketches about how I understood the problem and empathized with the target user: people who want to own an EV but don't have access to the necessary infrastructure.
Early ideation sketches exploring potential solutions
Personas
To better understand the target users, I created personas based on potential users of the Evico service.
Emma Heinrich, 29, Researcher, 81,000 CAD
Emma Heinrich
Emma is from Germany. She has just moved to Toronto for a six month temporary role where she will oversee the opening of her company's first North American location. She has her own electric vehicle in Germany, and she wants to drive an EV in Canada as well, but she doesn't have access to charging or parking at her new apartment and her workplace doesn't have a charger installed. Evico is the perfect solution for Emma to drive an EV during her time in Canada without having to worry about where to park and charge it and without having to deal with the paperwork of buying a new vehicle abroad.
Ibrahim Gasimov, 23, Junior Developer, 72,000 CAD
Ibrahim Gasimov
Ibrahim is a new graduate from the University of Waterloo, and he still lives in a student apartment with his friends. Ibrahim is an environmentalist and an avid fan of EVs. He just got a new job at a software company that is located in Cambridge which is an hour-half commute on a bus to his work. Ibrahim would love to have a car that will help him to commute to work, but he is just starting his career and cannot afford one yet.
Application Architecture
Based on the research and personas, I developed an application architecture to guide the development of the mobile application.
Application architecture diagram
Wireframes
I then created wireframes to visualize the user interface and flow of the application.
Lo-Fi wireframing based on initial UI sketches
UI Design
User Interface Design
After completing the Lo-Fi wireframes, I moved on to designing the high-fidelity UI for the Evico mobile application. The interface was designed to be clean, intuitive, and user-friendly, with a focus on making it easy for users to find and reserve parking spots with EV charging stations.
Splashscreen
Intro Map
Sign up screen
Account details
Phone verification screen
Find garage
Reserve garage
My garage
My garage charge