The digital platform for electric vehicle charging

The digital platform for electric vehicle charging

Virta’s B2B customers run EV charging networks in over 30 countries, from large station operators to a single charger at home. Their management platform had to work for all of them.

Virta’s B2B customers run EV charging networks in over 30 countries, from large station operators to a single charger at home. Their management platform had to work for all of them.

Virta’s mission is to solve the climate crisis by bringing electric mobility to businesses, people’s everyday lives and the energy system. Its digital charging platform connects the key players in the EV ecosystem and offers charging business as a service on top of a turnkey software solution. B2B customers use the platform to view and manage their charging networks, from the overall system down to individual sessions, charging points and customers. The platform had grown complex as features were added when the need came up. That increased training load, manual work for operators and customer support requests. It was also Virta’s primary sales tool, so it had to stand out to prospective clients as a forward-thinking, future-proof foundation. Nordkapp led the design of the new platform, embedding its specialists in Virta’s product team and working closely with its development partners. The renewed platform was shortlisted for Best Service at Vuoden Huiput 2021.

Year

2019

Industry

Energy

Scope of work

/

UX & Product Design

/

Design Systems

Timeline

2019

Virta’s B2B customers run EV charging networks in over 30 countries, from large station operators to a single charger at home. Their management platform had to work for all of them.

Virta’s mission is to solve the climate crisis by bringing electric mobility to businesses, people’s everyday lives and the energy system. Its digital charging platform connects the key players in the EV ecosystem and offers charging business as a service on top of a turnkey software solution. B2B customers use the platform to view and manage their charging networks, from the overall system down to individual sessions, charging points and customers. The platform had grown complex as features were added when the need came up. That increased training load, manual work for operators and customer support requests. It was also Virta’s primary sales tool, so it had to stand out to prospective clients as a forward-thinking, future-proof foundation. Nordkapp led the design of the new platform, embedding its specialists in Virta’s product team and working closely with its development partners. The renewed platform was shortlisted for Best Service at Vuoden Huiput 2021.

Year

2019

Industry

Energy

Scope of work

/

UX & Product Design

/

Design Systems

Timeline

2019

Starting from a clean canvas

Virta’s platform serves two key roles: charging point owners (CPOs) and electric mobility providers (EMPs). A CPO can be a large organisation operating a network of stations or a private owner with a single charging point. Most customers provide charging as an addition to their core business and have no charging experts on staff. They have the highest need for a clear experience. One of the team’s first tasks was to print the existing architecture of a single module and simplify it. The printout was over a metre long. The team agreed to start from a clean canvas. The goals were to simplify to the core, make the interface modular so different user roles see different features, allow light customer branding, and support further development as an ecosystem. Work started with stakeholder and customer interviews, while Virta’s team onboarded the designers to the domain. Hypotheses were shaped in war-rooms, on whiteboards and in sketches. Virta’s product manager mapped processes, components and dependencies visually, which let the team make decisions without starting from pixels. Each hypothesis became a high-fidelity interactive prototype, shown early to developers and in Virta’s internal demos before going into production.

Four user roles, defined through research, shape what each user sees, starting from a role-based onboarding flow for first-time users. The platform works on any screen size, from technicians in the field to desk workers managing thousands of charging units.

A neutral system built to scale

Customisation was one of the hardest calls. Free colour choices can clash with alerts and data points, and extending Virta’s own brand colours to customers invites requests for more. The team moved away from Virta’s brand language and crafted a neutral theme that Virta could own and maintain, drawing on its existing brand elements and on approaches used by leading operating systems. The result was a white-label look that allows light customisation and a design system with its own motion and interaction language. A system of contextual actions keeps the platform feature-rich without relying on training and support. New features also had to stay backwards-compatible with the old interface, which customers kept using during the migration, while Virta’s developers built the data management structure underneath. Nordkapp’s team worked on the project for under eight months, sharing responsibilities with Virta’s internal design team and finishing with a planned handoff of practices. The new platform was released in 2020, with a global roll-out planned customer group by customer group through 2021. New and existing customers gave very positive feedback on its simplicity and clarity.

“I am really happy to see the direction our platform renewal has been taking since we started the project and our collaboration with Nordkapp. The usability has been the core focus of the team since day 1 and the result today shows it in a very modern and intuitive manner.” — Jussi Ahtikari, Chief Technology Officer, Virta

Get in touch.

Have a project in mind? Reach out to us, and we’ll discuss the best way to move forward.

Matti Mölsä

Managing Director / Partner

Aarni Kaartokallio

Business Development Specialist

Teppo Kotirinta

Design Director / Partner

To email them directly, use the model:

firstname.lastname@nordkapp.fi

By submitting, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.

Get in touch.

Have a project in mind? Reach out to us, and we’ll discuss the best way to move forward.

Matti Mölsä

Managing Director / Partner

Aarni Kaartokallio

Business Development Specialist

Teppo Kotirinta

Design Director / Partner

By submitting, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.

Get in touch.

Have a project in mind? Reach out to us, and we’ll discuss the best way to move forward.

Matti Mölsä

Managing Director / Partner

Aarni Kaartokallio

Business Development Specialist

Teppo Kotirinta

Design Director / Partner

By submitting, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.