Design
Perch Energy
Portfolio
The problem
Community solar allows households and businesses to access renewable energy without installing rooftop panels, yet awareness remains low. Perch Energy’s enrollment platform faced three critical issues:
- Unclear value proposition - Users didn't understand what community solar was or why they should care
- High-friction enrollment - Complex verification steps and poor mobile experience caused 70%+ drop-off rates
- Inability to scale - Fragmented platforms and inconsistent design prevented expansion into new markets
The result? Low conversion rates, frustrated users, and stunted growth despite expanding into 7 states. I conducted in-person interviews, shadowed door-to-door, usability testing across income brackets, and deep analytics reviews. Three insights emerged:
Trust was the biggest barrier
Users didn't complete enrollment because they weren't sure if Perch was legitimate or if community solar
would actually save them money. Lower-income users especially needed proof—big brand partnerships, security badges,
and clear savings calculations.
Users needed a hook
Users needed to see "what's in it for me" immediately, not after several steps. Analytics revealed that users who
saw personalized savings estimates upfront were 3x more likely to complete the journey. The insight was clear: lead with the benefit, not the explanation.
One size didn't fit all
Three separate platforms (door-to-door, telesales, self-service) created fragmented experiences and slowed development velocity.
Consolidating into one platform with branching user flows enabled us to serve all channels from a single codebase, making iterations faster for engineering while ensuring consistency.
My Approach & Solution
Step 1: Tear it all down
I began by auditing and mapping all three existing enrollment flows end-to-end across self-service, telesales, and door-to-door. Rather than patching what was broken, I deconstructed each flow entirely: documenting every step, decision point, friction source, and assumption baked into the existing design. The goal wasn't to optimize the old system. It was to understand why it existed the way it did and whether any of it was worth keeping.
Step 2: Bring the right people into the room
Once the old flows were mapped and stripped down, I brought together engineering, analytics, and product to rethink from scratch.
Rather than handing off a design for review, I facilitated collaborative workshops where we challenged assumptions together.
What did the data actually say about where users dropped off? What were engineering's constraints that had shaped prior decisions?
What did product know about market variation that never made it into the design?
This cross-functional reset was essential. It meant the architecture we landed on wasn't a designer's vision handed to developers.
It was a shared model that everyone understood and had shaped.
Step 3: Design for modularity and scale
I designed a modular enrollment system that adapts to user intent and context. Rather than forcing everyone through one rigid flow, I built a flexible architecture that could scale across 21 markets, serve three sales channels (self-service, telesales, and door-to-door), and personalize based on user confidence levels.
Guiding principles:
- Lead with savings, not education - Show the "hook" (potential $ saved) immediately
- Build trust early - Surface credibility indicators before asking for personal information
- Reduce cognitive load - Simplify language, reduce steps, design mobile-first
- Validate iteratively - Rapid prototyping and testing with real users across income levels
I facilitated cross-functional workshops with engineering, sales and operations, and marketing to align on priorities, then created a unified design system to ensure consistency across consumer, business, and client platforms.