Euclid Power: Building the Operating System for Renewable Energy
Designing a 0-to-1 platform that reduced solar installation timelines by 35% and scaled operations for the clean energy transition
*Due to non-disclosure agreements any designs will be shown as part of a live presentation.
Overview
The Challenge Solar installation companies were drowning in fragmented tools and manual processes. Project managers juggled spreadsheets, email chains, and disparate software to coordinate installations, track equipment, and manage field teams—leading to delays, errors, and inability to scale operations as the renewable energy market exploded.
The Solution I led the design of Euclid Power's core product—a comprehensive platform that unifies project management, equipment tracking, workforce coordination, and performance monitoring into a single, intelligent system purpose-built for the renewable energy industry.
The Impact
35% reduction in average installation timeline from project kickoff to grid connection
Scaled to 200+ solar installation companies within first year of launch
$2.8M in operational cost savings across early adopter customers
4.7/5 user satisfaction rating from installers and project managers
My Role
Position: Lead Product Designer
Duration: February 2023 - December 2024 (22 months)
Team: Collaborated with 1 Head of Product, 1 Product Manager, 6 Engineers (frontend/backend), 1 Data Analyst, and the founding team.
Responsibilities:
Led end-to-end UX design from discovery through launch and iteration
Participated in user research with solar industry professionals across 12 companies
Created information architecture for complex multi-stakeholder platform
Designed and validated high-fidelity prototypes through user testing
Established foundational design system and component library
Collaborated with engineering on implementation and ongoing optimization
Presented design vision to investors, partners, and early customers
The Problem
Background
The renewable energy sector is experiencing unprecedented growth, with solar installations projected to triple by 2030. However, the infrastructure to manage this growth hasn't kept pace. Most solar installation companies—particularly small-to-medium sized businesses—were operating with tools built for general construction or cobbled-together combinations of generic project management software.
As Euclid Power's founding team discovered through early customer conversations, this patchwork approach was creating massive inefficiencies. A typical residential solar installation required coordination across sales, permitting, procurement, installation, inspection, and grid connection—often involving 8-12 people across multiple organizations over 60-90 days.
User Pain Points
Information fragmentation: Project data scattered across email, Excel, Google Sheets, and 3-4 different software tools, making it nearly impossible to get real-time project status or identify bottlenecks
Manual coordination overhead: Project managers spent 40-50% of their time chasing updates, manually updating spreadsheets, and coordinating between office staff and field teams through phone calls and text messages
Visibility gaps: Company owners and operations managers had no reliable way to understand portfolio health, resource utilization, or where projects were getting stuck—leading to reactive firefighting instead of strategic planning
Scaling impossibility: Companies hitting 20-30 simultaneous projects encountered a "complexity wall" where their manual processes broke down, limiting growth despite strong market demand
Business Constraints
Euclid Power was a seed-stage startup, which shaped the project in significant ways:
Timeline pressure: Need to launch MVP within 6 months to secure Series A funding
Technical constraints: Small engineering team meant we needed to be strategic about what to build first
Market validation risk: While early customer conversations were promising, we needed to prove product-market fit quickly
Resource limitations: I was the only designer, requiring me to move quickly and make high-conviction decisions
Success Criteria
We defined clear metrics for success:
Primary: Get 10 solar installation companies actively using the platform daily within 3 months of launch
User satisfaction: Achieve 4.0+ satisfaction rating from primary users (project managers)
Efficiency gain: Reduce time project managers spend on coordination tasks by at least 25%
Business metric: Enable customers to increase their project capacity by 20%+ without adding headcount
Research & Discovery
Research Methods
I conducted comprehensive research over 8 weeks to deeply understand the solar installation workflow and user needs:
User interviews: Participated or reviewed the 45 in-depth interviews (30-60 min each) with project managers, installers, operations directors, and company owners across 12 solar installation companies ranging from 5 to 150 employees
Contextual inquiry: 6 full-day site visits observing project managers, office coordinators, and field teams in their natural work environment
Workflow shadowing: Followed 3 complete solar installation projects from sale to completion (60-90 days each)
Analytics review: Analyzed anonymized data from 200+ solar projects to understand timelines, bottlenecks, and failure points
Competitive analysis: Evaluated 8 existing solutions (general construction software, solar-specific tools, and custom spreadsheet workflows)
Key Insights
Insight 1: The "black hole" between office and field
The most critical breakdown happened at the office-to-field boundary. Project managers would create detailed plans, but once crews left for installation, communication devolved to sporadic text messages and end-of-day phone calls. When problems arose like missing equipment, permit issues, unexpected site conditions, the office team often learned about delays hours or days later.
"I'll plan everything perfectly, but then the crew gets to the site and realizes the electrical panel isn't where the site survey said it was. By the time I find out, we've already lost half a day. Then I have to scramble to reschedule everything downstream." — Sarah, Project Manager, 75-person installation company
This single communication gap was responsible for an estimated 20-30% of project delays.
Insight 2: The "spreadsheet juggler" persona
We initially assumed project managers would be our primary users, but discovered that many companies had a critical "coordinator" role—often someone without a construction background who had become expert at juggling multiple spreadsheets and tools. These coordinators were incredibly resistant to change because they'd built elaborate workarounds.
The insight: We couldn't just build for project managers. We needed to design for a spectrum of users from spreadsheet experts to field-first leaders, and we needed to prove value immediately or they'd stick with their familiar (if inefficient) systems.
Insight 3: Permitting is the silent killer
While everyone talked about installation timelines, the real bottleneck was often permitting—the bureaucratic process of getting approval from local authorities. Projects regularly sat for 2-4 weeks waiting for permit approval, but this was largely invisible in existing tools.
Companies had no systematic way to track which projects were stuck in permitting, who was responsible for following up, or how to forecast capacity based on permit approval timelines. This made resource planning nearly impossible.
User Personas
Based on research, we identified three primary user types:
Operations-focused Project Manager: Former construction background, manages 10-15 projects, needs real-time visibility and quick problem-solving tools
Detail-oriented Coordinator: Administrative background, manages schedules and documentation for 20-30 projects, expert with spreadsheets, risk-averse about new tools
Strategic Operations Director: Oversees entire portfolio (50-100 projects), needs high-level visibility and forecasting capabilities, rarely in daily tools but needs trustworthy reporting
Design Process
Ideation & Exploration
I facilitated a week-long design sprint with the founding team, product managers, and three customer advisors (solar company owners who were helping shape the product). We focused on divergent thinking before convergence:
Mapping exercise: Created a comprehensive map of the solar installation ecosystem—all stakeholders, touch-points, and data flows
"How Might We" workshop: Generated 150+ opportunity statements, then prioritized based on user pain intensity and business value
Concept sketching: Each team member individually sketched 5 different approaches to solving the core coordination problem
Validation voting: Customer advisors ranked concepts based on what they'd find most valuable
This process surfaced a key tension: Should we build a specialized tool optimized for solar installation workflows, or a flexible platform that could adapt to each company's unique processes? Customer feedback was clear—they wanted opinionated workflows based on industry best practices, not another blank canvas.
Information Architecture
The biggest IA challenge was organizing information for multiple views of the same data. A single project needed to be viewed through different lenses:
Timeline view: For understanding sequence and dependencies
Resource view: For managing installer assignments and equipment allocation
Status view: For identifying what's blocked or at risk
Location view: For field teams managing multiple nearby projects
I explored three architectural approaches:
Project-centric: Everything organized by individual projects (most intuitive but hardest to see patterns)
Phase-centric: Organized by workflow phase like "Design," "Permitting," "Installation" (great for identifying bottlenecks but fragmented project context)
Hybrid dashboard: Flexible views allowing users to filter and organize based on their current need
Through card sorting exercises with 8 users and prototype testing, we validated the hybrid approach—defaulting to a project-centric view but with powerful filtering, grouping, and view-switching capabilities.
Wireframing & Iteration
I worked through multiple fidelity levels, testing assumptions at each stage:
Low-fidelity exploration (Weeks 1-2):
Created 20+ different layout variations for the main project dashboard
Tested paper prototypes with 5 users to validate information hierarchy
Key learning: Users needed to see project status at-a-glance without clicking—status indicators and visual health metrics became critical
Medium-fidelity wireframes (Weeks 3-4):
Built interactive Figma prototypes for core workflows: creating projects, updating status, managing equipment, coordinating field teams
Participated in remote usability tests with think-aloud protocol
Key changes: Simplified project creation from 3 steps to 1, moved equipment management from sidebar to integrated inline experience, introduced "quick actions" for common tasks
High-fidelity refinement (Weeks 5-8):
Added visual design, refined interactions, built out edge cases
Participated in-person testing sessions watching users complete real tasks
Key iteration: Added a "morning briefing" dashboard view after discovering project managers' first daily task was always assessing what needed attention
Key Design Decisions
Decision 1: The Unified Project Timeline
The Problem: Solar installations involve sequential phases that depend on each other, but existing tools either showed everything as independent tasks (losing the critical path) or as rigid Gantt charts (too inflexible for the reality of solar installation where timelines constantly shift).
Alternatives Considered:
Option A: Traditional Gantt chart - Shows dependencies clearly but users found it intimidating and hard to update quickly
Option B: Kanban board - Easy to understand but lost the time dimension critical for resource planning
Option C: List-based task manager - Simple but completely hid the sequential nature and timeline implications
Why This Solution: I designed a hybrid timeline that combined the clarity of phase-based progression with the flexibility to adjust dates without breaking the entire plan. Key innovations:
Intelligent date propagation: When one phase extends, downstream phases automatically adjust while showing users what changed
Phase-based grouping: Tasks grouped by major phases (Design, Permitting, Installation, Inspection) with visual progress indicators
Flexible viewing: Could collapse to phase-level for high-level view or expand to see all tasks
Mobile-optimized: Field teams needed simple status updates, not complex timelines—created a separate "field view" optimized for quick updates
Decision 2: Smart Equipment Tracking
The Problem: Equipment management was a major pain point. Installers needed panels, inverters, racking, and more—all arriving at different times from different suppliers. Projects regularly delayed because equipment wasn't tracked systematically, leading to last-minute scrambles when crews arrived onsite and realized they were missing critical components.
Alternatives Considered:
Option A: Separate inventory system - Comprehensive but added another tool to learn and maintain
Option B: Manual entry for each project - Simple but error-prone and didn't help with planning
Option C: Equipment library with smart allocation - More complex to build but could automate planning
Why This Solution: I advocated for Option C despite the engineering complexity because the potential efficiency gains were massive. We designed:
Equipment templates: Pre-configured equipment sets for common installation types (5kW residential, 10kW residential, 50kW commercial, etc.)
Smart allocation: System automatically creates equipment requirements based on project specs
Delivery tracking: Integration with supplier systems to update delivery status and alert PMs when equipment arrives
Availability forecast: Shows when equipment is allocated to other projects, helping PMs schedule around availability
The key was making it feel effortless—equipment management happened automatically in the background, with users only needing to intervene for exceptions.
Initial version took 6 weeks longer to build, but in early customer testing, it eliminated an estimated 3-5 hours/week of manual equipment coordination per project manager.
Decision 3: The "Health Score" System
The Problem: Operations directors managing 50-100 projects needed a way to quickly identify which projects needed attention, but reviewing each project individually was impossible. Existing tools relied on manual red/yellow/green status updates, which were subjective, inconsistently applied, and often out of date.
Alternatives Considered:
Option A: Manual status flags - Simple but unreliable
Option B: Rule-based alerts - More reliable but created alert fatigue
Option C: Algorithmic health scoring - Most sophisticated but risked being a "black box" that users didn't trust
Why This Solution: I designed an algorithmic health score (0-100) that synthesized multiple signals:
Timeline variance (is the project tracking ahead/behind schedule?)
Task completion rate (are milestones being hit?)
Equipment status (is everything available when needed?)
Permit status (are approvals progressing as expected?)
Communication activity (has the project gone silent?)
The critical design challenge was making the algorithm transparent and trustworthy. My approach:
Visual breakdown: Clicking any health score showed exactly what factors were contributing—"Timeline: -15 points (3 days behind), Equipment: +5 points (all delivered early)"
Editable weights: Companies could adjust how heavily different factors counted based on their priorities
Clear thresholds: 80-100 = healthy (green), 60-79 = attention needed (yellow), below 60 = at risk (red)
Historical tracking: Showed how health changed over time, helping teams learn patterns
Early testing showed directors could scan 50 projects in under 2 minutes (vs. 30+ minutes with manual review) and catch problems an average of 5 days earlier.
Final Design
The final Euclid Power platform launched with a cohesive experience spanning three main modules, all unified by consistent navigation, visual language, and data model.
Core Experience Overview:
The platform opens to a customizable dashboard that gives each user role exactly what they need to start their day. Project managers see their active projects with health scores and priority actions. Operations directors see portfolio-level metrics and trends. Field team leaders see their scheduled installations with equipment status and site details.
From there, everything branches into three interconnected modules: Projects, Resources, and Insights—each serving a distinct purpose while maintaining context across the entire system.
Core Features:
Feature 1: Project Command Center
The project command center is where project managers live. Each project has a dedicated workspace showing:
Unified timeline with phase-based progression and automatic date propagation
Task management integrated directly into the timeline—no separate list to maintain
Team collaboration with @mentions, comments, and file attachments at the task level
Equipment tracking showing what's allocated, what's in transit, what's available
Document hub for permits, contracts, site plans, and inspection reports—all linked to relevant project phases
The design philosophy: everything you need for a project in one place, with intelligent defaults and minimal clicking required for common actions.
Feature 2: Resource Orchestration
The resource orchestration module solves the scheduling nightmare. Operations coordinators can:
Visualize installer availability across the team in a calendar view
Drag-and-drop assignment of crews to installation phases
See conflicts instantly when someone is double-booked or equipment isn't available
Optimize routing by viewing projects geographically and scheduling nearby installations together
Communicate changes with automatic notifications to affected team members
The critical insight was that scheduling isn't just about filling calendar slots—it's about orchestrating interdependent resources (people, equipment, project phases) with geographic and timing constraints. The interface makes these constraints visible and helps users find optimal arrangements.
Feature 3: Portfolio Intelligence
The insights module transforms project data into strategic intelligence. Operations directors and company owners get:
Portfolio dashboard with key metrics: projects by phase, average cycle times, bottleneck analysis, revenue forecast
Trend analysis showing how performance changes over time—are we getting faster? Where are delays increasing?
Capacity planning tools that project how many new projects the team can handle based on current resource utilization
Custom reporting for specific questions like "what's our average permitting time by jurisdiction?" or "which installers complete projects fastest?"
The design principle: start with the answer, not the data. Every view leads with insights and conclusions, with supporting data available for those who want to dig deeper.
Design System Contributions
Building a 0-to-1 product meant establishing the foundational design system from scratch. I created:
Component Library (150+ components):
Standard UI elements (buttons, inputs, dropdowns, modals)
Domain-specific components (project cards, health score indicators, timeline elements, equipment status badges)
Complex components (filterable tables, multi-select filters, calendar pickers optimized for project scheduling)
Interaction Patterns:
Documented 12 core interaction patterns used throughout the product (inline editing, bulk actions, progressive disclosure, contextual help)
Created motion principles and animation specs for transitions and micro-interactions
Established responsive breakpoints and mobile optimization strategies
Visual System:
Color palette balancing visual energy (this is renewable energy!) with professional trustworthiness
Typography scale optimized for dense information display while maintaining readability
Iconography system with 80+ custom icons for domain-specific concepts
Data visualization standards for charts, graphs, and timeline representations
Documentation:
Created comprehensive Figma library with usage guidelines
Wrote decision documentation explaining rationale for key patterns
Established governance process for adding new components
This system enabled our small engineering team to build consistently without constant design review, while maintaining quality and cohesion. By month 6, engineers were implementing new features with 90% design system components and minimal custom UI.
Results & Impact
Quantitative Results:
Customer adoption: Launched with 8 early adopter companies, grew to 200+ companies within 12 months—2x our target
Efficiency gains: Project managers reported 40% reduction in coordination time (10 hours/week average), exceeding our 25% target
Project velocity: Average installation timeline decreased from 75 days to 49 days (35% reduction) across early adopter companies
Capacity increase: Customers reported ability to manage 30-40% more simultaneous projects with same headcount
Cost savings: Early adopters collectively saved an estimated $2.8M in operational costs during first year
Revenue impact: Contributed to $4.5M Series A funding round led by top-tier climate tech investors
Qualitative Feedback:
"This is the first software I've actually wanted to use. It just makes sense for how solar installation actually works. We went from spreadsheet chaos to having real control over our projects in less than a month." — Michael Torres, Operations Director, 40-person installation company
"The health score alone is worth the price of admission. I can spot problems days before they become fires. Our project delays are down by half, and my stress level is down even more." — Jennifer Kim, Project Manager, 15-person installation company
"Euclid Power has become mission-critical infrastructure for our business. We've grown from 50 to 120 installations per quarter, and we did it without hiring a single additional PM. That's not an exaggeration—this platform scales our operations." — David Okonkwo, CEO, 85-person installation company
Adoption & Usage:
Within 3 months of launch:
94% of users logged in daily (well above industry average of 40% for B2B SaaS)
Average session time: 47 minutes—indicating real work being done in the platform
78% of projects tracked from start to completion in the system
Mobile app (which I also designed) used on 65% of installations for field updates
The most telling metric: organic customer referrals. 40% of new customers in months 4-12 came from existing customer recommendations, indicating genuine product-market fit.
Reflections & Learnings
What Worked Well:
Deep domain immersion: The 8 weeks of research, especially the full-day site visits and workflow shadowing, gave me an intuitive understanding of the problem space that informed every design decision. Time invested in research always pays dividends.
Designing for the spectrum of users: Balancing the needs of spreadsheet experts, field teams, and strategic executives made the product stronger. We didn't try to force everyone into the same interface—we created specialized views while maintaining a unified data model.
Progressive rollout: We launched with 8 carefully selected early adopter companies who gave continuous feedback. This allowed us to refine the product based on real usage before scaling to hundreds of customers.
Challenges Overcome:
Change management resistance: Our biggest challenge wasn't the design—it was convincing people to abandon their familiar (if inefficient) systems. I addressed this by creating migration guides, conducting personal onboarding sessions with early customers, and designing "quick win" features that showed immediate value. The health score system was specifically designed to provide value within the first week, before users had fully migrated their workflows.
Balancing flexibility vs. opinionation: Solar companies have different processes, but too much flexibility leads to analysis paralysis. I resolved this tension by designing opinionated default workflows based on industry best practices, while allowing customization at specific decision points. 80% of customers used our defaults with minor adjustments, validating this approach.
What I'd Do Differently:
Looking back, I would have involved field installers earlier in the design process. I focused heavily on project managers and coordinators (the daily users), but field teams ultimately became critical users through the mobile app. Their workflow needs would have influenced some core information architecture decisions if I'd understood them sooner.
I also underestimated the importance of data migration and import tools. Companies had years of project history in spreadsheets, and while we built basic CSV import, a more sophisticated migration toolkit would have accelerated adoption and provided historical context for our analytics features.
Future Opportunities:
The platform is evolving beyond its initial MVP. Based on user requests and usage patterns, the next phase includes:
Predictive analytics using machine learning to forecast project completion dates and identify risk patterns
Supplier integration marketplace allowing companies to connect directly with equipment suppliers for real-time inventory and pricing
Customer portal where homeowners can track their installation progress—addressing a significant communication gap we observed
Financial management integrating project costs, revenue, and profitability tracking
AI-powered scheduling that optimizes crew assignments based on skills, location, and project requirements
The renewable energy industry is still in the early innings, and there's massive opportunity to build the digital infrastructure that enables the clean energy transition. Euclid Power's core product is the foundation, but the platform vision extends far beyond what we've built so far.
Future Opportunities:
The platform is evolving beyond its initial MVP. Based on user requests and usage patterns, the next phase includes:
Predictive analytics using machine learning to forecast project completion dates and identify risk patterns
Supplier integration marketplace allowing companies to connect directly with equipment suppliers for real-time inventory and pricing
Customer portal where homeowners can track their installation progress—addressing a significant communication gap we observed
Financial management integrating project costs, revenue, and profitability tracking
AI-powered scheduling that optimizes crew assignments based on skills, location, and project requirements
The renewable energy industry is still in the early innings, and there's massive opportunity to build the digital infrastructure that enables the clean energy transition. Euclid Power's core product is the foundation, but the platform vision extends far beyond what we've built so far.
Related Work
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Starbucks IMS Uplift - Designing for operational efficiency at scale
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