Case Study: Overdrive Energy Solutions
Mission
Overdrive Energy Solutions, a leader in replacing diesel generators with clean solar power at major live events such as Coachella, Lollapalooza and Google I/O, needed to overhaul their web presence to improve their market position and evaluate their product needs for expansion into other regional markets.
I was tasked with leading the design of the company web products, providing a roadmap for a more substantive website redesign, conducting direct field research in how the hardware & power data are mobilized during live events, and designing a mobile Angular application to manage company operations.
Roles
Product Design Lead
Illustrator
2023-Present
Strategy
As a small start-up with a growing calendar of marquee events, we chose a strategy that would address their most immediate web marketing needs by refreshing their existing Squarespace website, and then focus on creating a roadmap for a more complete website redesign and new digital and power products. There were three primary strategic goals:
- Maximize the visibility of successfully powering each new live event as they occur and showcasing the environmental impact.
- Visually communicating beneficial economic & environmental data to potential customers and existing customers.
- Utilize hardware, power and sales data APIs to consolidate company & event operations into a single Angular application.
Content Strategy & Event Landing Pages
With the core existing site updated with the most recent services information and infographics, I moved onto the overall content strategy.
Working with the Overdrive director of marketing, I designed multiple landing pages for several of their most recent events that could be replicated by the marketing team with new event content. I also created multiple social media videos and images that would showcase the growing potential to shift live events away from diesel power without sacrificing reliability.
These initial strategy helped me become familiar with the breadth of their work and develop information architecture for an entirely new website.
Overdrive Mobile App
I am leading the design of a mobile & tablet application for the new Overdrive hardware that also integrates recurring operations functionality like event power scoping, client proposals, power data reports, and team management. Current Overdrive hardware is managed with an existing third-party application that is limited in functionality.
Essential Functionality
- Create client event proposals with itemized hardware, power grid, and crew details.
- Create & manage confirmed event details, power installation grids, hardware, and crew.
- Provide real time power consumption and solar generation data from new proprietary Overdrive hardware.
- Manage newly created regional teams & inventories.
- Generate event power consumption and solar generation reports for case studies and industry partners.
Overdrive Application Wireframes
Overdrive Mobile App Screens
Event Proposal - Internal View
Post-Event Power Summary - Client Web View
Overdrive Hardware Design
For the hardware component of the product design roadmap I spent time helping service and assemble the current line of Overdrive inverters and battery systems, and deploying solar panels at live events of various sizes.
One of the most complex challenges of the new hardware design is creating sophisticated and durable power units that also accommodate hyper-efficient stacking and loading. As part of the design process I’ve been researching live-music road equipment, motion picture camera rolling track, & data center rack assemblies.
As part of the product design process I’ve been able to use my illustration skills to create high-fidelity product renderings. Their existing battery & inverter systems are well worn from use and they found themselves without serviceable product images for sales purposes.
Product renderings of existing Overdrive hardware
I had one of their engineers provide me with the listings of each component sourced for each model, and using Adobe Illustrator I was able to create multiple renderings of each product in orthographic and three-quarter views with the components exactly scaled and placed.
The next phase of the hardware design process will be designing a first prototype of the new inverter and battery cases once the internal components have been specified by the engineers.
Conclusions
The strategy to quickly overhaul the company web presence and company sales materials resulted in the desired increase in event power services. The direct field research into deployment and operations yielded a lean, functional mobile application design. Using VictronEnergy and SalesForce APIs, it can manage multiple regional operations with staffing, equipment and power grid details all calculated and quantified in real time.