GridX Empower Re-imagined
I explored a 2–5 year vision for GridX’s Empower platform—the widgets utilities embed inside customer portals powered by GridX APIs. The concept introduced a campaign-driven, segmented widget system for utilities and a personalized, insight-rich experience for customers.
Clean Energy
Challenge
Utilities want to guide customers through complex topics—time-of-use (TOU) rates, EV adoption, solar, and rebates—without overwhelming them. The existing Empower product delivered insights via APIs, but was lacking front-end embeddable widgets, personalization, and the ability to scale and measure.
Core problem: How might we help utilities deliver the right widget to the right customer at the right time—and prove it works—while keeping implementation simple and on-brand?
Results
Executive feedback was highly positive. The vision was considered too future-focused for immediate production but directly informed enhancements to current products (e.g., improved targeting options and richer widget analytics and an enhanced widget library).
Research
I synthesized qualitative research into a number of problem statements and potential solutions to begin ideating and chatting with internal teams about what's possible. I also identified a couple of constraints to place on the project.
Utility users—program managers, marketers, and admins—need a simple way to orchestrate campaigns of embeddable widgets, target precise segments (by location, technology, or rate), and keep everything on-brand. They also need built-in measurement to prove impact and iterate quickly on what works.
Utility customers - need clear, contextual guidance that demystifies bills and TOU, highlights personalized savings (EV, solar, efficient appliances), and surfaces relevant rebates. Most importantly, they need concise next steps that turn insight into action.
The constraints were that the product must be white-labelable, it needs to be API forward, and needs to be a low lift for utility IT teams to implement.
Hypothesis
If utilities can segment and sequence widgets like lightweight campaigns—and customers receive contextual, timely guidance—then we’ll see higher engagement and more program enrollments (EV, TOU, demand response), with lower support burden.
Information Architecture
After going through all of the APIs and gaining a deeper understanding of the data and outputs, I put together a demo to show off a happy flow and some of the potential new features for Empower. This began with taking a 1,000 foot view of the information architecture.
WireFRames
Created some very simple wireframes to validate the information available within each page and component of the experience (quickly moved to more hi-fi) and began considering the feature necessary to craft a great experience.
Prototype
I put together a high fidelity 'happy path' prototype outlining the major pages and features of the product to present to executives.
Homepage: This is the page users would be presented with when logging in to the platform. They have the ability to quickly jump in to making a new campaign, including previews of popular widgets. They can also see some overall campaign insights, and view any active campaigns in a sortable table.
Campaigns: In the campaigns section of the product users are presented with campaign highlights and a sortable/filterable list of all of their campaigns. The list they're presented is based on user permissions and roles set in the admin of the product. From the campaign page users can also choose to create a new campaign, which will launch the campaign creation wizard.
Campaign Detail: When a user clicks into a specific campaign they're presented with relevant information. This includes the campaign details, where basic campaign and widget information is shown. The embed code for that specific widget so they can easily copy it and send to their IT team. Reporting in a dashboard format that can be exported and shared within their organization. A preview of the widget, with their branding white labeled onto the styling, and an overview of which APIs are being used in that widget.
APIs: Users can dive deeper into the capabilities of each GridX API allowing them to educate themselves about the potential of the widgets, and empowering them to create their own custom widgets.
Widgets: Users can view a library of their own custom widgets, as well as take a look at the library of pre-made widgets to see what might work for their customers. This is also an opportunity to create a widget 'marketplace'.
Conclusion
Executive feedback was highly positive. The vision was considered too future-focused for immediate production but directly informed enhancements to current products (e.g., improved targeting options and richer widget analytics).
Sometimes UX isn’t about shipping tomorrow—it’s about making the future more concrete so the org can move toward it with confidence. This exploration framed Empower as a campaign-driven energy personalization system, balancing utility needs with customer needs. The demo aligned stakeholders, sparked delivery work, and set a practical path forward....even if it is a long path.