Founded in 2013, Aurora Solar is the world’s #1 solar design software company, based in San Francisco. It specializes in virtual CAD modeling, using map data, Lidar data, irradiance data, and sun path data. In 2021, Aurora launched its first consumer facing product - Lead Capture AI. As the lead designer for this product, my role was to understand the homeowner, and the solar installers motivations, to create an ideal experience to capture quality leads.
Lead Capture AI is an iframe widget that’s embedded on a customer website. It enables solar installers the capability to present homeowners with an accurate solar model on their home within minutes.
The product is designed to capture quality leads for solar installers, and automatically build a 3D site model estimate with placed solar panels. The product also calculates estimated cost savings, hours of usable sunlight, and energy offset.
Collaborating with the UX research team, we set out to conduct nine moderated interviews, with homeowners who had recently purchased solar panels, nationwide. Using a prepared set of questions, and also working with a product manager as a subject matter expert, we mapped out the touch points for a typical end-to-end solar buying process.
Aside from motivations, this research was to also uncover myths/hesitations that a prospective homeowner may have before pursuing solar.
During the research synthesis process, our goal was to identify homeowner motivations. A set if four personas emerged from this research, all with different motivation profiles.
Each persona ranked higher and lower for each attribute, shown in the above radar chart.
We also spoke to Aurora customers – the installers, to determine what data they’re looking for in a good solar candidate.
This feedback led us to a questionnaire approach, where a homeowner is asked qualification questions that would aggregate a lead score, available in Aurora’s core product.
Based off this research, we created an overview page that captures the qualification questions from Lead Capture AI. This screen would then be used by an installer or sales rep, to initiate a phone call or in-person visit to a home.
Once a homeowner provides an address and estimated monthly electric bill, they’re presented with a free interactive preview of solar on their home, and a contact for for a sales rep to contact them.
My role was to create a consumer facing view of the CAD experience that’s used across all homeowner facing products.