iStormed

This app is used during a hurricane restoration event; external contractors and teams will have the ability to enter time and expenses electronically and submit them for approval through the app. We migrated mobile and web applications, improved user experience to enter time and expenses, and added new features.

Web application and mobile application.

Improvement of the current process based on user feedback.

After a hurricane or climatic disaster, it is necessary to re-establish services in the affected areas. Florida Power & Light (FPL), in conjunction with external contractors and teams, is in charge of re-establishing the electricity service.

Depending on the area and the disaster, it is necessary to hire more people to support them. They must report the hours and their expenses so that FPL can pay them.

There were many problems because the hours and expenses were not being reported correctly, and FPL could not match the invoices to pay them. It was necessary to improve the process and the interface to make it easier for users.

My role in the project

As the UX Designer, I worked for a week with part of the development team, the BPO, and stakeholders of the application in FPL to define the application's requirements and goals. We reviewed the complete flow and made some proposals for the new flow in the application. Also, I collaborated as a design thinking facilitator in these sessions.

Constraints, processes, and activities

iStormed mobile application first version to be re-designed.

iStormed web application first version to be re-designed.

This project was thought to be completed in 3 months; the first week was in Florida at the FPL offices with the stakeholder team, aligning ourselves with the planning of the NextEra teams.

In the first three days of the week, we would define the deliverables; in those sessions, we realized that it was necessary to define and understand the tool that would improve before determining the deliverables. In the following two days, we did some activities to finish defining each new feature we will integrate into the application.

Defining the application process with Nextera stakeholders.

The following week, the rest of the development team assembled for sprint 0 back in Mexico. According to the plan, we would have six sprints to finish this project's first phase and planned a trip to Florida halfway through for tests and feedback. The pandemic changed the plan a bit; we adapted to the new way of working and extended the project by two more sprints to complete these tasks remotely.

The biggest challenge we faced was from the developer's side when migrating from one technology to another; we had to add a few more people to the project to finish on time.

NextEra can better control contractors and their expenses with this app. Registering teams is easy, and team leaders can follow up with each member. As a result, the time it took from registering the expense to paying it was cut in half.