Fronius – Solar Energy

Led the redesign of the Solar.web photovoltaics monitoring platform, which grew from 40,000 to over a million users in 4 years. Despite multiple stakeholders, outdated design guidelines, 18 languages and scaling to over 24 countries, created a straightforward and neutral platform for all ages and both sectors b2b and b2c that met the demands of rapid market growth. The design proved so effective that it lasted almost a decade.

The platform is offering real-time insights into energy production, consumption, and storage. It features performance analysis, energy balance overview, and remote system updates, allowing users to optimize efficiency. It is accessible via web and mobile, ensuring convenient system management.

• Did quick data inspection, executed quick expert, stakeholder and friendly customers interviews for figuring out the main issues

• Very though timeline − within 6 months redesigning and implementing a platform from non-responsive to responsive

• 2 phases of implementation, because it was too much to turn all views around at once

• Presenting and advertising of it at the biggest photovoltaics fair in Europe
  
  

Goals

• Speed up loading times and reduce clicks

• Align design more closely with corporate branding

• Achieve better visual balance with a clean, clear interface

• Use meaningful, user-friendly colors

• Support a wide age range (35 − 75+)

• Ensure fast time-to-market delivery
  
  

Challenges

• Long decision processes

• No design system available and everything was deriving from an outdated print manual

• Outbalanced resources concerning amount of designers versus programmers, had to create awareness first within company

• A small UX team had to be set up quickly, because the PV sector has been growing ultra fast these days

• After the platform getting too big and important for the company there appeared many more stakeholders who wanted to have influence

• Old historic company structures been hindering quick decision making processes
  
  

Results

The redesign of Solar.web successfully transformed it into a stable, user-centric and responsive platform, scaling its user base from 40,000 to over a million in 4 years. The redesign focused on enhancing usability, aligning with corporate design standards, and supporting multiple languages and countries. The outcome was a more efficient, cohesive system that significantly improved user experience and remained effective for nearly a decade.

Personal learnings

To handle scaling issues, the team focused on improving communication and documentation as the team grew, ensuring alignment across departments. Throughout the project, we learned a great deal about navigating large organizational structures and hierarchies. Due to rapid scaling, technical issues often took priority over UX/UI improvements, causing some delays. Even after 3 years away, the company is still working on implementing a new design system, while the original design—used for over 10 years—continues to evolve. Time has shown the lasting value of our work, as there's always room for improvement in design.