EVBox
EVBox's mission is to support businesses and homes in transitioning to electric mobility with their innovative charging solutions. Through the EVBox mobile app, charging station owners can easily locate nearby stations and manage their charging sessions.
Our team designed and built the EVBox app from the ground up, delivering a key solution that helped secure new business deals by providing customers with a seamless experience alongside their charging stations.
- Contribution
- UI interaction design, prototyping, user research
- Platforms
- Android, iOS
- Year
- 2020
100K Charging points under management
12M Charging sessions per year
€30M Transaction revenue per year
Kick-off
At the outset of the project, our team of designers, developers, and project managers spent two days collaborating in a room, whiteboarding the app's key user flows. Each flow was then translated into a user story, ensuring we had a clear roadmap for development.
Research
We rented an EV and drove from Netherlands to Germany to uncover problems with existing apps. The most important information was:
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Amenities
Are there restaurants or bathrooms to use while charging?
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Charge speed
Are there restaurants or bathrooms to use while charging?
How long will it take to charge my car?
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Access
How do I get to the station? Is it in a garage?
Wireframing
After translating the sticky notes into user stories, we moved on to wireframing the main flow and tested it with EV drivers. This allowed us to gather valuable feedback and ensure the app was intuitive for its target users.
We encountered technical challenges when trying to display amenities, as most charging station owners don't include this information in the database the app pulls from. This limitation required us to rethink how we presented amenities and ensure the app still provided valuable data to users.
Launch
The MVP was successfully launched on both the App Store and Google Play Store, enabling EVBox cardholders to easily locate charging stations and access important station details.
Building on the MVP
The next features we added were account creation and the ability to add a charge card. These essential updates paved the way for users to manage their charging sessions directly through the app.
Managing charge sessions
With users now able to log in and add a charge card, the next step was enabling them to start and end their charge sessions directly through the app. We also included real-time updates on the charging status, showing how long the session had been running and the battery's charge level.
Creating a charge schedule
Charge schedules help EV drivers save money by charging during off-peak hours. Users can set their chargers to turn on only during these hours on certain days of the week. They would need to find out from their energy provider when off-peak hours are in order to correctly set them in the app. As a more advanced feature, this was scoped for well after the MVP was launched.
Conclusion
The EVBox mobile app was designed as a white-labeled solution for clients who purchase EVBox charging stations and brand their charge cards with their company's name. The app's main accent color and logo were customized to reflect each client's branding, making it a unique experience for users.
It became widely used by customers of EVBox's clients. The app maintained a solid 4.3 rating on the App Store but was ultimately removed when EVBox lost funding from its parent company, Engie, and ceased operations.