Volta
CHECK-IN TO CHARGE
Electric vehicle charging company Volta is introducing paid fast charging and needs a cohesive mobile and charger check-in experience across new paid and existing free chargers.
Role — Lead Product Designer (research, design, and testing resource manager)
Team — 1 product designer (additional testing designer), 1 product manager, 3 developers, and 1 researcher (external)
Stakeholders — CEO/Founder, VP Product
Customer — Drivers
Product — Mobile (iOS + Android) + hardware charger signage
Goals 🎯
Business
Provide fast charging service.
(opportunity: market demand)
Increase customer data collection.
(benefit: smarter network planning/scale, site service marketing, customer awareness)
Experience uniformity.
(brand/service quality: “Volta is this”)
Project
Design, build, and launch mobile check-in experience in 1 quarter.
Optimize mobile check-in and de-risk points of friction via QA and user testing.
Reach 90% check-in success.
(current charging success rate 98% with no check-in)
Customer
Charge up.
(opportunity and destination/fast)
Make charging easy.
(no work, have fun)
Research + Discovery 🔬
Competitive Analysis
NFC/RFID is super easy (get close with mobile check-in)
Latency is very low (tech needs to address this)
Payment requirement (what about "pay for free charge"?)
Monitor and end charge (notifications, receipts)
Personas
Technological
Vehicle range - 250 miles vs 25 miles
Fluency - has vehicle app vs understands charge load balancing
Behavioral
Public charging frequency - daily vs weekly
Proximity to other services - directly near vs walking distance
Economic
Cost per charge - free vs cheap vs fast/expensive
Customer Journey
Availability during search and upon arrival are her experiential low points
Design exploration 🧭
Storyboard
Existing: 1. Want fuel (need statement), 2. Identify and navigate to charger, 3. NEW add payment, 4. NEW check in on mobile app, 5. NEW Charge (monitor, control), 6. NEW End (review, receipt)
Testing 🧫
Phase 1: “Welcome, please check in”
Qualitative interviews + click-thru prototypes (12 participants)
Wireframes + Prototypes: Low-fi designs provided lots of context but leaned towards cognitive overload
Key Takeaways
Check in and add payment worth it to charge?
YES, they’re primed by competitor experiences.
Idle fees discourage customers from charging?
NO, they discourage customers from blocking chargers.
Most people combined charging with an activity like errands, leisure or shopping and stressed the importance of this access while charging.
New exploration: Charger Reservations
“Driving to a charger and not knowing whether it’s going to be available when I get there always makes me nervous. Ideally I’d want to know it’s gonna be there and ready for me.”
–Sandy
Note — pushed to post launch because of technical difficulty
Phase 2: Disrupting existing customer behavior
User testing (8 participants) with live mobile app, chargers, and vehicles
Left: “I understand the signage, I just didn’t pay attention to it.” –Mia
Right: “If I’ve been successful in the past using the same system then I there’s no reason to pay attention to anything.” –Sumera
Charger signage
Current signage is not disrupting existing customer behavior.
Key Takeaways
Signage disrupting existing customer behavior?
NO - 25% (1/4) acknowledged
It was mostly ignored even when charging attempt was unsuccessful.
Check in workflow successful?
OK - New: 50% (2/4) + Existing: 100% (1/1)
New customers were mostly successful but the sequence is fragile and needs more process support.
Emergency charge (30 minutes charge with no app) viable for launch?
NO - 25% (2/8)
Thought they were receiving full 2 hour charge instead of 30 minute.
(this stakeholder requirement was removed after it was explained how unintuitive and difficult this feature was for customers)
Push notifications helped all users feel more comfortable while charging.
New exploration: Check in tutorial
“I'd prefer to follow instructions on my phone to indicate I'm doing things correctly.'“
–Michael
Note — additional exploration for guiding users through the check-in sequence felt like a stronger solution but was backlogged because of scope increase.
Phase 3: Dialing in signage + check-in
User testing (10 participants) with live mobile app, chargers, and vehicles
Signage evolution
Illustrations in version 3 (right) were more attention getting and mapped better to the mobile app experience.
Mobile workflow
Charger proximity automation.
More intuitive start charge buttons.
Tighter integration between charger status and mobile screens.
Notifications for charge start, reminder, and charge end.
Key Takeaways
Signage disrupting existing customer behavior?
YES - 80% (8/10) acknowledged signage
Updates performed better especially with new plug hang-tag (can’t ignore that one).
Check in experience ready for limited launch?
YES - 100% (8/10)
Check in success rate satisfied team and stakeholders for limited public launch.
Is receipt timeliness important post charge?
NO - 10% (1/10)
Customers rarely require receipts even for paid fast charging.
Design compromise
In order to ship, we went with a modal popup tutorial (below), which is a bit abstract and not supportive through the check in process. This would be high priority to update post launch.
Modal popup tutorial (swipe from right/left to navigate)
🚀
Phase 3: ready for limited public launch!
80% successful check ins (goal 90%) – monitor onsite public check ins and engage customers for feedback, adding charger handle labeling