Louisville Water
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Case Study
Duration
January 2021
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February 2021
Tools
Adobe CC, Figma
My Role
UI Designer, UX Researcher
An Introduction
The Louisville Water Company is the public water provider for the Louisville, KY metro area. Louisville Water’s footprint includes more than 1,000 square miles and it’s customer base is over 1 million people. In just a few taps, manage your accounts, pay your bill, and check your water usage. It’s never been more simple.
The Research
Initially I started by conducting short interviews, and asking users to fill out a questionnaire. This allowed me to glimpse into their typical day to day usage of the Louisville Water Company services and revealed pain points for the user.
User Questionnaire
My Findings
Initially I started by conducting short interviews, and asking users to fill out a questionnaire. This allowed me to glimpse into their typical day to day usage of the Louisville Water Company services and revealed pain points for the user.
- Time spent is less than 10 minutes per month on the LWC website. Most people only use the service to pay their bill online.
- Users thought the site was overly complicated, redundant and dated looking. Site did not look or seem cohesive.
- The auto-pay feature was a very popular feature with nearly all users.
- Paying your bill was a giant source of frustration, this part of the service is not optimized for online use and is confusing.
- Customer service is basically non-existent online, you have to take time and call into a hotline and wait on the phone to get help with anything. Online customer support was a popular request.
- Payment confirmation is confusing and users sometimes do not know if their payment went through or not.
Personas
Terrance Upton
Age: 20-35
Status: Single
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Status: Single
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Needs
Fast and easy way to pay bills online. A way to contact support within the website or app to report a problem so that you have a quick response.
Frustrations
The website UI is way too complicated for what I use it for. Average time spent on the website is under 10 minutes per month, so the easier it is to pay a bill or report a problem the better.
Richard Perkins
Age: 40-49
Status: Married
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Status: Married
Education: Bachelor's Degree
Needs
An option to set up auto-pay, water usage is usually pretty consistent so won't really need to look at bill. Would like a notification if the bill is higher than normal.
Frustrations
Website/app needs to be clear in if youare paying monthly/bi-monthly etc. The site is a little cluttered so it is hard to look at and read through.
Meredith Jacobs
Age: 50-60
Status: Married
Education: High School Diploma
Status: Married
Education: High School Diploma
Needs
A simple elegant solution to online bill paying. If there are any service problems or outages occurring, there needs to be some sort of notification.
Frustrations
Not being technologically proficient, the website is hard to navigate. Navigation is broken and doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The Strategy
I wanted to focus on the main few features that every user will use regardless of their background; the ‘sign up’, ‘log in’, and ‘pay bill’ pages. After the main features, everything else needed to be consolidated and easy to find and intuitive.
Ideation
Once I had a general structure, I moved on to creating wireframes. I kept this very minimalistic and barebones so that I could change things in the future before the final screens if needed.
Style Guide
Typeface
Gotham is a geometric sans-serif typeface family with letterforms that were inspired by examples of architectural signs of the mid-twentieth century. It’s familiar look is easy to read for all demographics.
Color
#313EAC
#EA5743
#EBCA6B
#30ADA5
Prototyping
Finally we come to the prototype screens. I used the style guide to add the final touches to everything as well as place images and icons where needed.
