bp pulse
WORKING ON GLOBAL EV CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE
Challenge: Quickly adapt to a new industry, define a medium- and long-term design vision for a global EV charging business, and support BP’s strategic ambition as a net-zero integrated energy company.
This effort involved multiple areas: establishing a roadmap for the network management system (CPMS), refining the on-location charging experience, reorienting the consumer app (B2C/eMSP) around brand engagement, and exploring new product ideas, opportunities to unlock the benefits of AI responsibly and to drive additional revenue.
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Alexandre Tonneau (Global head of Design for electrification)
Alessandro Filippi (Product Design Lead),
Theo Tagulau (Product Design Lead),
Bryan Goh (Prodct Design Lead). -
Sketch
Figma
Mural
Zeplin
Dovetail
Lookback
Blender
Dall-E
Adobe Creative Cloud (barely) -
Production screen designs
High fidelity prototypes
3D Mesh models for VR testing
Concept work
bpCore Design System extensions for Pulse desktop / Mobile / Hardware / Stickers
Product identity studies
PROCESS
Design Direction and Leadership:
Stakeholder Mapping: Mapped all primary and secondary stakeholders across the platform, including external suppliers, to understand existing systems of incentives and motivations for strategic context.
Business Alignment: Worked closely with Product to align desirable outcomes with BP’s strategic vision and specific departmental goals, using KPIs to guide focus.
Cross-Department Strategy: Identified areas of common interest across departments, which allowed us to pool resources, manage risk, and create win-win opportunities that benefited both the user and the business.
Leadership Engagement: Held regular alignment meetings with leadership to manage expectations, delivering consistent progress updates with measurable results to reinforce confidence in the ongoing programs.
Project management process:
Agile Double Diamond: Used the Double Diamond approach in four phases — discover, design, develop, and deliver — recursively iterated in two-week sprints with weekly reviews. Projects were organised from epics to features and tasks, all tracked in ADO (Microsoft’s Jira equivalent).
Discovery Phase: Kicked off each project with a meeting to confirm scope and ensure we were solving the right problem, using as-is service mapping, flow mapping, and interviews with users and SMEs.
Design and Development: Developed a range of candidate solutions, validating through testing before converging on a final production candidate. Delivered pixel-perfect handoffs to engineering, fully integrated with the design system where relevant.
Continuous Improvement: Conducted retrospectives post-delivery to identify areas for improvement in process and ways of working.
RESULTS (CPMS)
After about 3 months of research, concept generation, prioritisation and alignment meetings, the work started on progressively delivering a brand new vision for the company CPMS. This is what early beta testing shown:
Through automation, detailed tracking, and extensive API integration, we reduced human error by 50% and improved operational efficiency by 23%.
Established transparent, KPI-driven workflows, delivering 11 high-priority projects across multiple pods, each with a focus on analytics and performance tracking to provide leadership with actionable insights.
Explored the of AI for predictive maintenance, fault classification and optimising maintenance operations leading to the beginning of the creation of rich data sets of based on previous faults and resolutions.
RESULTS (eMSP)
Developed a new design language for the native mobile app, consistent with BP’s design system.
Redesigned the app architecture to improve account management and brand engagement while enhancing charging, mapping, and loyalty features. Improved navigation efficiency in key areas by 20%, with preliminary testing showing a 35% increase in screen time and engagement.
Explores the introduction of AI as part of in app customer support, specifically to improve response time and automating resolution leveraging and improving current knowledge base articles.
RESULTS (Hardware)
Designed a new system for in-network stickers compatible with the range of devices, reducing usability-related support calls by 12-18%.
Developed on-screen UI designs for chargers, extending branding, user-centered functionality, and dynamic advertising options.
Engaged suppliers in customisation discussions, leading to a primary DC charger supplier implementing UI style customisation in firmware, allowing BP Pulse a deeper branded experience beyond simple screensavers.
Explored used of VR to develop digital tweens of existing sites and brand new concept sites in order to run testing and validate assumptions.
