AGL is Australia’s oldest and leading energy provider, being named Australian Gas Light Company in 1837. Their first service was lighting the street lamps the city each night, and over the years moved to electricity and gas provision. With the advent of the internet and online services, AGL started taking it's customer service online with the ability to research plans, signup and manage accounts online. This interface however was provided by third party agencies and resulted in their website being served from 35 different pieces, each stored and managed by different providers. In 2015, AGL decided to invest in a digital transformation to be able to work faster and take charge of it’s own digital products. This greatly empowered and connected the business.
See it live at: agl.com.au
I was brought into this new digital team to establish and grow their first in-house design practice, and oversee design outputs across the new AGL app and the rebuilding of it's first self-managed, centralised customer website. When I entered, there was one UX designer, and one contract designer, both working on PCs, and using different tools struggling to store asets in Microsoft sharepoint that could not store design files. During my time there, I grew the team from it’s initial two digital designers, to 8+ UX/UI designers, servicing digital products across 7 scrum teams, in 3 release trains.
Projects & Details
As the value of becoming a digital company became apparent, the desire to scale the transformation required an inhouse product design team. This is a documentation of building this first team.
Until it's digital transformation, AGL's online prescence had been created by 35 different companies, and agencies that controlled it's updates, and was in 35 separate pieces. The initiative to bring this website together and rebuild it inhouse, instigated the company's move to its transformation, and was our opportunity to revamp the user experience and interface.
The big project of rebuilding our site was at risk of simply being a lift-and-shift with all of it's inconsistencies if we were not aligned in our componentry, interactions, experiences and branding. To enable our teams to go forward and scale consistently, we set out to begin this digital library in the AGL Digital Playbook initiative.
In the excitement of our new capabilities, two apps were starting to be developed in our teams. Our electricity & gas utilisation app for all customers, and the Solar command app as an additional service for solar energy customers. I oversaw the design and experiences on the development of these projects. These are some case study points.
To support the culture of diversity that the new digital team was leading at AGL, I brought together the new women in digital via a regular breakfast group to support women in tech. This group enabled us to grow together professionally and build cameraderie, and support women and diversity outside the digital team.
