HERO GOV Maps & APP
Revealing the impact of a program to local governments.
The opportunity
HERO, a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) product, is a public-private partnership between Renovate America and local governments. In order to both "sell" the idea to local government officials and keep them happy once the program was in place, I was brought in to create products that government officials could use to track the progress of the HERO Program in their communities.
What I did with it
I started by conducting extensive research with the target users. Since government employees are extremely busy, it was difficult to conduct direct interviews with them. The few interviews I was able to conduct were augmented by extensive interviews with our internal stakeholders in the "Municipal Engagement" team. The data from this research was distilled into personas and a journey map to help guide development of products.
It was clear that, given our government parters' limited time, they would need products that offered instant understanding of the impact of the HERO program and didn't require a lot of work on their part.
I developed initial concepts for a map application that would give visibility into where projects were happening in communities and created an information architecture that tied together the location and the category of interest to provide community-specific statistics about the impact of the HERO program at a glance.
From research into how the data was being used by municipal partners, I also designed a "Snapshot" report that could easily be generated with a couple of clicks to provide an instant update on the progress of the program in the community.
I also designed a companion mobile app that would give access to the same real-time statistics with a familiar information architechture to reduce learning curve and switching costs when using both products.
Persona
Draft personas were created and were used as guidance in designing products that were clear, understandable, and didn't require a lot of the users' time.
Journey Map
The journey map was constructed to identify areas of weakness in a city manager's experience with HERO and recommend areas for improvement.
Local Contractors
Shows where the local contractors are located. Contractors can be filtered by the primary type of improvements they install.
Applications
Shows which homes are applying for HERO.
Homes improved
Shows where homes are bing improved and what types of projects are being done with HERO. Projects can be filtered by type.
Detail Card
Provides the connection to individual homes that are using HERO by showing their individual improvements and estimated savings.
snapshot report
Allows a municipal partner to quickly get an overview of the progress of HERO in the community in a format appropriate for a slide deck or printing.
HERO Gov App
Access to your community's data while on the go.
The Outcome
All of the products I designed for HERO Gov were extremely well received by both our municipal partners and the internal Municipal Engagement team. They continually pointed to these products as a key reason they were able to either sign up a new community or retain an existing community.
My success lead to me working myself out of a job on the HERO Gov team. I was pulled off of the team because my skills were needed to help grow Renovate America's fledgling consumer lending product, Benji.