
Maps +
Modernizing utility inspection process in California through mapping application
Pacific Gas & Electric, 2018
Intro
Digital Catalyst Team Working Toward Company Efficiency
PG&E's Digital Catalyst team functions are to design, develop, operate and maintain the information and telecommunications systems that enable the Company to meet its commitment to customers: Keeping the Lights on and the Gas Flowing, Delivering at a Reasonable Price, and Providing Simple and Convenient Options.
Bringing Agile processes to an established company, the team works to design a suite of apps for both desktop and mobile, which will facilitate inspectors, engineers, and the teams that support them. In addition, we aim to provide safety features and work management tools that are made possible by adapting our systems to up-to-date technology.
My Role
Lead Maps+ Designer
I primarily designed for the app Maps +, which acts as a core for other apps in the PG&E work suite. I worked in a spectrum team, built of developers, a product owner, a SCRUM master, and myself. During my time on the Maps + team, I:
Spent hundreds of hours in the field working with field workers to understand pain points and workflows in order to create app for non-technical workforce.
Designed, shipped, and iterated MVP features – received field feedback ideas as opportunities to improve app design.
Worked closely with users as well iOS tech lead /developers during sprints to iron out challenges and solve problems. Took proactive approach to check in with product/tech lead and dev team members to ensure design was well understood.
Implemented a new design system into Maps + to create consistency with other PG&E Apps.
Research
Field Visits
Our team made a strong effort to design user centered products, gather consistent feedback, and observe the way our PG&E employees and contractors used our tools out in the field. Field visits varied greatly in location and line of business observed. Visits included:
Mapping office in Sacramento to build a map corrections tool and validate designs
Mark and Locate in San Jose, which responds to business and residential requests to dig, and watched how they used Maps app to locate underground gas lines
Vegetation Management team in Santa Cruz to learn about their grassroots effort to share field intel and safety alerts, and how we could save lives by integrating a similar feature and drawing from their database.
Personas and Workflows
After each field visit, I made a shareable persona that synthesized my learnings into an easily scannable poster. These personas captured processes, current tools, and pain points. I was careful to avoid prescriptive language and biases of how they could use our product. After personas were build and shared, they could be linked together by a workflow, simplifying how a process works today. Finally, a storyboard proposes a solution of how we envision this process working in the future, which can be shown and discussed with stakeholders.
The Problem
Past Tech Didn't Meet the Need
Past digital teams had spent years to produce products that were detached from the end user and not widely accepted and embraced. Many supervisors and field workers reverted back to their old technology, printing paper map packets. These tended to be out-of-date or represent assets inaccurately. Field workers were unable to complete ad hoc jobs they didn’t have printed information for, and wasted time driving back and forth to sometimes distant offices to print.
An Unexpected MVP
Our first business case we planned to address was a tool for inspectors to log work. After meeting with our users and showing wireframes and proposed functionalities, they asked for us to just give them the map baselayer with their work assets located on it. Though Maps was never intended to be a stand-alone product, it became our MVP based on feedback.
With a pilot group of 25 users, we rolled out the first version. We met with a varied group once every few weeks to answer questions and better understand their use cases and needs. Our two biggest asks were:
“Now that I have the map, how can I edit inaccuracies?”
“Is there a way for me to share and see safety intel about a location?”
After the conclusion of our first pilot, word and enthusiasm had spread about the app naturally, and we had a list of 250 referrals to roll Maps+ out to next.
Field Intel
Crowdsource to Keep Field Workers Safe
My first large project as lead designer of the maps team was to surface and crowdsourced safety intel. There are many safety hazards associated with being out in the field such as threats by irate customers, environmental and access route hazards, and bad dogs. By alerting our users of these warnings, we have the ability to prevent injury and potentially save lives.
Additionally, providing up-to-date info on access codes, access routes, and locks saves our users a call to their supervisor, a trip back to the office, or a return trip once the customer has been contacted and reached. This efficiency can save the company tens of thousands of dollars. We identified access constraints as our starting point for MVP, and imported the existing data set.
Map Correction
Making it Fast, Complete, and Transparent
Due to a combination of bad form design, poor training, too many hand-offs, and technical constraints, mapping experts often receive unclear requests with not enough information to make the correction. Either the correction is discarded, or the mapper must go through hoops to identify and contact the original submitter for clarification.
By interviewing mappers, clerks, and field workers, I gained a greater understanding of current processes and pain points, designed a solution that addressed the most common types of corrections. I then socialized these designs out in the field to gain further feedback. Working with my Product Owner, we identified what was MVP and began breaking down technical constraints and challenges. Map corrections is scheduled to be released in January 2018
The Result
Shipped to 5,000 Users
95% Would Recommend to Colleagues
The field user base grew from 250 to 5000 via word of mouth, and even further when we started marketing the app.We surveyed 26 pilot members across all user groups, including linemen and foremen, troublemen, estimators, and engineers. The following are their unedited quotes about their favorite features:
"GPS helps tremendously to locate difficult to find transformers and other facilities. I also don't have to get back into my vehicle."
"The pure fact that its available. Its easy to use and has information at my fingertips. It opens quickly and zooms with no lag or delay"
"I like that I can search by equipment, transformer, address. Ability to see where equipment are and street maps on phone at any time is great!"
How does Maps+ help you with your job?

Interview: The Circuit Trace Feature Turned Hours of Work into Seconds
Joule Design System
Unifying a Family of Apps
When I first began at PG&E, each designer was working within a silo with infrequent collaboration on visual design. Atomic level elements like font selections and input fields had slight variations, and larger components differed more dramatically.
Led by co-designer Shawn Wong, we began a two-month effort to create a system, "Joule", which all new designs would adhere to.
Joule provides a solid visual foundation that set the baseline for current & future designs across Digital Catalyst applications. With our well-defined baseline (a.k.a. Atoms) we then expanded into modular components (a.k.a Molecules) and templates. The aim is to provide brand harmony for the company, UI consistency for our users, and a visual language for our design team.
Many of our apps contained forms. Now, after we had gathered requirements, we were able to piece together forms in minutes, and our developers shared the forms pod code to quickly code and release new designs.