Challenge Summary
Welcome to Solar Power Report Lease Tool Wireframe Concepts Challenge. In this challenge, we are looking for your help to come up with a wireframe that helps users understand the mission of Solar Power Report, how it is different from the commercial sites, and to utilize their powerful tools to organize/add the bids received from companies quotes and will allow comparison of bids!
We are looking for wireframe (Axure) solutions based on requirements from our client. We’re also looking to the community to come up with interesting ideas for the workflow - we’re absolutely open to creative solutions!
At the end of this wireframe challenge, we are looking to have a complete solution for the user experience and flow of the application.
NOTE: We will be paying $150 to all submissions that are outstanding at checkpoint.
Round 1
Initial Wireframe Concepts of the below pages for checkpoint review.
A. Homepage (Landing Page)
D. Solar Lease Tool
Any additional features or screens that will help explain your idea.
Round 2
Final Wireframe Concepts for all given requirements with any checkpoint feedback implemented.
A. Homepage (Landing Page)
B. Sign up/Sign-in
C. Installer Directory
D. Solar Lease Tool
E. Solar Basics
F. Solar News
G. Solar Mission
Any additional features or screens that will help explain your idea.
The Purpose of this challenge is to come up with the wireframe that helps define the flow of application. We are looking for the Topcoder Design Community to help us with planning our new "user experience" (UX).
The Solar Power Report is an editorial platform for users to read up on solar energy for their house, compare data visually, compare their solar bids, and to understand the legal aspects of their solar installation. This is not a commercial website that is selling anything to consumers but a powerful tool aimed to help consumers understand and accurately compare all aspects of solar Installations. In this challenge, you’ll be asked to re-architect the information in the current site, add some upgrades and put together the powerful solar lease comparison tool.
Wireframe Expectations:
- You must create traditional wireframe call-outs and notes
- Provide us with your interaction and click-path thoughts and suggestions
- Produce HTML click-through wireframes that can be used to demonstrate all mentioned functionalities as required in each round.
- The website must be very easy to use and intuitive. Keep that in mind when create your solution for the layout and flow information.
- You MUST cover all requirements mentioned in challenge details below.
- Use note pane in every single page you design to explain what items are addressed in that page from the documentation, what things you added/changed/removed, use it to make your idea clearer and help the client to give you constructive feedback.
Required Pages:
We are looking for you to create wireframe for the below pages..
General Requirement:
- Provide option for users to to share content on social media (prominent share buttons for: FB, Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit)
- Wherever possible, please include a space (placeholder) for Ads. We would like you to consider including ads are of sizes: Leaderboard: 728x90, Wide Skyscraper 160 x 600, Medium Rectangle 300 x 250, Rectangle 180 x 150" (Please view this reference: http://www.iab.net/guidelines/508676/508767/displayguidelines)
A. Homepage (Landing Page):
- We need a landing page for users, this page needs to be thought/designed considering two types of users as given below:
- First Time Users: These might have heard about solar energy but have no real idea about financing options or technology. He/she will be interested in our editorial content first and foremost. There needs to be a clear call to action for that on this landing page that takes them to necessary information.
- The other type has already gotten offers from their installers (most likely lease offers since they make up about 2/3 of the current market) but he/she does not know how to compare them. He/she should be able to take advantage of our solar lease comparison tool (given as point D below). This is the second call to action this landing page should provide.
Existing site landing page
- We would like you to take a look at our current site www.solarpowerreport.com.
Features required in this landing page
Currently in the existing site’s landing page, there are four sections: Solar Tools, Solar Basics, Solar News (Note: we are renaming Solar Blog as Solar News), and Solar Mission.
- Please also add new sections/categories for "Solar Forum" and "Solar Installers" (see below for more information on this)
- We are looking for your thoughts on how site’s overall navigation should look like?
- “Solar Forum” will provide essential information about solar installation and also allow users to discuss further on the topic. (Note: we don’t need you to wireframe the forum page for this challenge and we will be using a wordpress plugin for that!)
- Users will have option to Sign up/Sign-in..
- Space for a video in a prominent spot about our mission - it is important to explain what does “Solar Power Report” do and how it is different from all those sites that want to sell you things.
- We need a search function in the header, so it can be reached from any page!
- Newsletter sign-up is needed on this page
- Feeds from social media feed.
- Include a section in the footer for disclaimer, terms of use, privacy policy, contact!
- We need ad space on this page and please have the size as leaderboard (728x90) and a wide skyscraper (160 x 600), plus options for rectangles is also required.
B. Sign up/Sign-in:
- User to this site will have options to sign up/sign in to their site.
- We are looking for your thoughts on what information we need to get from the users to allow them to sign-up with this site
- How can the user sign-in into this site?
C. Solar Installer Directory:
- This page will show the list of installers who do solar installation.
- Come up ideas on how to display the list of installers and what are the necessary information that need to be shown for each of the installers? (Perhaps installer rating based on
customer reviews, location (address), contact info, service they are providing)
- It would good to show installer reviews, so users visiting this site could get an idea about the installer, how can this be shown?
- Allow users to search through the list of installers.
- We need ad space on this page and please have the size as leaderboard (728x90) and a wide skyscraper (160 x 600), plus options for rectangles is also required.
Installer Details Page:
- When a user select one of the installer from above screen, we then show the installer details
- We are looking for your thoughts on what need to be shown in this view.
Create Installer Profile:
- A new installer visiting this site, should have an option to create their profile
- Try to keep this page as intuitive as possible
- Basically, we need to get important details (all details expect Rating as mentioned under "Installer Directory" 2nd point) from the installer for this installer sign up process.
D. Solar Lease Tool:
Solar lease tool consist of two parts, financial comparison and legal aspects section - we have described in details about the two parts..
NOTE: We had provided a wireframe to help you understand on how the visualization of bids work (Part 1)!
Part 1: Financial Comparison:
Users enters the bid received from the quotes given by companies and they will be able to compare the bids visually and choose the best out it.
Add Bid:
User need to enter below details..
- Company + bid name
- Average Avoided Electricity Cost
- Option: Lease, Loan or Purchase
- Down Payment ($)
- Length (yrs)
- Option: Payment Stay Same or Payments Change
If “Payments Stay Same”:
- Enter monthly payment ($)
If “Payments Change”:
- Enter first payment ($)
- Enter last payment ($)
- Enter number of payments
Action Button:
- “Add”: Once the user enters above details clicking on this will add the bid.
Assumptions:
- User will have options to enter Electrical Rate Escalator and Discount Rate as percentage.
- These values will be normalized to a default value when adding bids. These values can than be changed by the user to create different custom scenarios.
Bids Visualization (Comparison):
- When a user adds a bid as above, they can visually see the list/comparison of bids ranked by the “NPV of Savings” amount ($). The higher the NPV of Savings is, the better the offer ranks
- Each bid shown in this view will contain additional information “Company + bid name, down payment ($), monthly payment ($), NPV of Savings ($), Saving to Equity, Simple Savings ($)
- The dollar scale (as shown in wireframe) on which the bids are ranked should also show an average point which represents the average NPV of Savings ($) in the region the user looks for bids.
- All values that the user is entering need to have a link to an explanation. We were thinking in the form of a pop-up box with a short explanation that then also links to a glossary where the terms are explained in detail
- The tool should allow for two bids to be compared but if the user wants to save the results or wants to compare more than two bids, he needs to sign in with a user name and a password.
- We would like you to come up with a layout that allows the users to compare more than 2 bids, we would like you to come up with a view that shows possible/maximum number of bids that can be compared?
Part 2: Legal Aspects:
In the bid comparison view, we need a way for the users to change the visualization of bids based on the legal aspects preferences (this part) they had chosen, we think it would be good to show this updated view as a alternate view in addition to the existing bid comparison view.
Note: Choosing legal aspects preferences is optional for the user to choose, so there must be an option to turn the legal ranking “off” so that the lease offers are only ranked according to their “Part 1: financials”.
About Legal Aspects:
Each solar lease contract has legal aspects that can determine how hard it is going to be for a homeowner to sell his house, for example. In order to deal with this aspect of the decision making process the idea is to ask the user for his preferences. Depending on how the user ranks his preferences, bids might move up or down in the final ranking of visualization.
For example:
Bid A might offer the biggest Present Value (be the best choice financially) but might make it very hard for homeowners to sell their house. Bid B might be a little less financially lucrative but has no hurdles to overcome when it comes to selling the house. As a result bid A will rank the highest for the homeowner who does not plan to sell his house in the next 20 years. Bid B will come out on top for somebody who plans to sell his house within a few years.
While big installers have standard contracts that we can load into our database and evaluate their legal provisions we need to have an option for users to manually evaluate their contract from their local installer.
- In order to manually evaluate the contract from their local installer, we need to give the user guidance on how to rank what they find in their contracts. We will ask the user to look for five legal aspects and grade them:
Note: below “LEGAL” questions need to be asked to the user..we are looking for your thoughts on how to present these questions in your wireframe?
LEGAL ASPECTS:
a. Access to property: Does the lease company have the right to enter my property at any time (easement)?
- Yes
- No
b. Restriction to transfer lease
- Lease company does not address the issue
- Lease company must approve buyer’s credit score
- Homeowner must buy-out the lease if the buyer does not get approved
c. Impact on roof warranty
- Lease company does not address the issue:
- Lease company assumes no responsibility if the roof warranty is void
- Lease company guarantees the installation at least for the length of the roof warrant
d. Insurance requirements
- Lease company insures installation for damage, loss, theft
- Lease company insures installation, homeowner must name installation on homeowner’s insurance
- Lease company must be named as insured party on homeowner’s insurance
e. Indemnity provisions
- No indemnity clause
- Homeowner agrees to not hold the lease company responsible for claims, losses, damage, and liabilities
- Homeowner agrees not to hold lease company responsible except for gross negligence or intentional misconduct
USER PREFERENCES:
- In this section, we gather user preferences about solar installation.
- User should be able to rank these preferences
- Below are some of the preferences questions that user should be able to answer and also rank the questions based on how important the question.
- So, to rank a question, think of how the user can rearrange (perhaps drag-drop rearrange..etc any other thoughts?)
- In your wireframe, we are looking for your thoughts on how to show these questions.
a. How likely is it that you will sell your house within the next 5 to 8 years?
- very likely
- not very likely
- very unlikely
b. Are you willing to grant the lease company unlimited access to your property for the life of the lease (easement)?
- Yes
- No
c. How concerned are you that the solar installation is voiding the current warranty for your roof?
- very concerned
- slightly concerned
- not concerned at all
d. Are you willing to insure the solar installation even though you do not own it?
- yes
- maybe
- no
e. Are you willing to NOT hold the lease company responsible for claims, losses, liabilities and damages (indemnity provision)?
- Yes
- Yes, but not for gross negligence or misconduct
- No, not at all
The result of the ranking should be visualized and ideally be dynamic. If the user changes his preferences he should be able to see how that affects the ranking of his lease offers (ideally in real time).
E. Solar Basics:
- This page will detail about the basic information about solar
- This could have sub-navigation, looking for your thoughts on how to shown them!
- Please see http://solarpowerreport.com/?page_id=196 to get an idea about the type of content on this page.
- We need ad space on this page and please have the size as leaderboard (728x90) and a wide skyscraper (160 x 600), plus options for rectangles is also required.
F. Solar News:
- This page need to show the latest news about solar..
- How do you think content need to be handled in this page?
- Each of the news content will need to linked to their respective detail page.
- Please see http://solarpowerreport.com/?page_id=128 to get an idea about the type of content on this page
- We need ad space on this page and please have the size as leaderboard (728x90) and a wide skyscraper (160 x 600), plus options for rectangles is also required
G. Solar Mission:
- This will just show the Solar Power Report mission
- Mission will just be a few lines of text as well as portraits and bios of the three co-founders.
- We need ad space on this page and please have the size as leaderboard (728x90) and a wide skyscraper (160 x 600), plus options for rectangles is also required
Target Audience:
- One who got bids from installers but does not know how to compare quotes.
- Residential solar used to be the domain of the eco retirees, long-time affluent homeowners with an environmental consciousness.
Learn Axure:
New to Axure? Here are some quick tutorials to help you get started.
http://www.axure.com/learn
Judging Criteria:
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
- User experience - redo of the current site flow, and navigation to consider responsive layout as well as additional content detailed.
- Completeness and accuracy of the areas of functionality and content
- How well your wireframes provide a consistent user flow and clear information architecture for the application
Submission & Source Files:
Preview Image
Create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024 JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
Submission File
Generated HTML files with all the requested contest requirements stated above.
Source Files
Wireframes should be built in Axure. The resulting files should have generated HTML files. Also, all the content must be listed and the pages are linked together to show page flow.
Final Fixes
As part of the Final Fix phase, you may be asked to remove, update, or change some features of the wireframe.
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.