
## Introduction

Snowy Hydro is a NSW-based electricity company, generating power from water and snow melt to create renewable energy for over 1 million homes and businesses. One of the most important aspects for them is managing risk information and complex data sets to support critical operations and regulatory compliance. That’s where the Daily Water Balance (DWB) comes in.To help improve this process for Snowy Hydro, I was tasked with designing a desktop-only, web-based version of the DWB.

## Design Process

As hydro-electricity was a new domain for me, I wanted to get a basic understanding before jumping into designs. After a couple of chat with the SME’s (end users), and many questions later, I felt like I had it down pat (albeit, at a very high level).

Next up was unpacking the chunky 160-page requirements document. Working closely with the BA, I clarified any uncertainties and started condensing the detailed requirements into a simple UI feature list. At the same time, I was reviewing the existing application to identify any issues and understand current workings (check it out below).

![](/Old%20excel%20system%20-%20redacted.jpg)

I then began making a really bare bones structure within Figma to outline the main screens and what would be required within each.

An interesting aspect of this project was that not everything could be designed within this iteration due to budget constraints. Based on this, they requested low-fidelity, partial designs that the development team could build upon later, during the development phase. What does partial mean? Essentially, rather than catering to every requirement and designing every screen, I would design the main screens and patterns. The developers would then use these pre-existing designs to fill in the gaps.

Snowy Hydro was quite new to the software development world, having only worked on one project prior to this. Fortunately, they had a basic design system I was able to leverage. This allowed me to provide high-fidelity designs, in a low-fidelity time frame. With one key difference being the level of detail. I also set up a group chat to ensure everyone in the project, including the SME’s, had an easy way to reach out and provide feedback.

Working screen by screen, I gradually built out the required UI features. Often creating multiple variants for a given problem to provide options to the SME’s as well as development. I had regular sessions with the project team and SME’s to workshop the designs together, making sure they were comfortable with what was being proposed. I also shared designs with the broader stakeholder group to keep them informed and provide a forum for questions.

I followed a similar style to the previous web app that was developed to ensure users didn’t need to re-learn key UX patterns. In terms of the navigation, I was able to simplify this down into 3 main pages (it used to be 20+ tabs!). Within each page, I used tabs to further segment and simplify the information being shown at one time. While this was a change from the previous system, the SME’s were confident it would make it easier to use and learn. Finally, I utilised side panels to show the lowest level of detail. This provided the users with necessary context, while allowing them to see necessary information in one view.

Eventually the 6 weeks was up and it was time to bundle everything up, ready for handover. The team was very pleased with my work and asked me to continue working for another 2 weeks. In these 2 weeks, I was able to dive into some more of the detail, replacing placeholder fields with SME-verified fields for example. This helped move the designs towards a more finalised point, and reduce the effort required by development.


Modernise a legacy Excel application that’s crucial to providing millions of Australian’s with renewable energy.

Snowy Hydro.

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