Industry
Fleet Management
Client
Synop
Project Type
Platform Design
Reimagining Electric Vehicle Charge Management
Challenge & Approach
As Design Director for Synop, I faced the challenge of defining the complete product and brand experience for an electric vehicle fleet management platform entering a rapidly evolving market. Commercial fleet operators were navigating the complexity of EV adoption without integrated tools to manage charging infrastructure, energy costs, vehicle performance, and grid interoperability simultaneously. I orchestrated all design activities across the organization, working closely with engineering, product, and executive teams to establish the foundational design principles and interaction patterns that would enable fleet operators to transition from combustion to electric with confidence. The strategic imperative was clear: create a platform that could scale with fleet operators as their needs evolved from basic charge management to sophisticated energy optimization and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) revenue generation.
System Design & Technical Visualization
The core design challenge centered on making highly technical fleet operations data immediately comprehensible to users with varying levels of technical expertise. I established a component library focused on charting and table patterns specifically tailored for electric vehicle charge management visualization, including real-time state of charge monitoring, time-of-use optimization displays, demand response alerts, and multi-site energy distribution views. The interface needed to surface critical operational data (charging status, battery health, energy consumption patterns) while enabling proactive decision-making around load management and grid participation. Working across the platform migration and redesign, I developed visualization standards that could communicate complex scenarios like cold-weather battery preconditioning schedules, automated charging session sequencing to maintain vehicle connectivity, and bidirectional energy flow during V2G events. The design system balanced density of information with clarity of action, allowing fleet managers to monitor hundreds of vehicles across multiple depots while drilling into individual asset performance when anomalies required attention.
Outcomes & Impact
The platform redesign and brand evolution contributed to a 300% increase in Synop's customer base, supporting fleet operators managing over 400MWh of energy across 650+ commercial depots with 99.99% average uptime. The design work enabled customers like Minnesota Coaches to solve previously intractable operational challenges (maintaining optimal battery temperature and state of charge in sub-zero conditions through smart scheduling algorithms), while supporting grid-scale innovation like 115MWh of discharged V2G events that transformed fleet vehicles into distributed energy resources. Beyond the core platform, I evolved Synop's corporate brand presence through enhanced marketing assets, presentation templates, conference materials, and sales collateral that positioned the company as the enterprise-grade solution for commercial EV fleet operations. The component library and visualization patterns I established created a scalable design foundation that accommodated integrations with over 100 unique charging station models while maintaining a consistent user experience, ultimately enabling Synop to serve customers ranging from school bus operators to Fortune 500 logistics companies navigating the complexity of fleet electrification at scale.
