Version two: the project dashboard on desktop and in the iOS and Android app. Same construction project, same five phases, wherever the owner checks in.
NVEnergy — New Construction Portal
Untangled Nevada Energy's dense, multi-step service setup into a guided experience — for contractors, homeowners, and staff alike.
Overview
The problem
Setting up new electrical and gas service for a construction site through Nevada Energy meant office visits, outdated PDF forms, faxing or hand-delivering paperwork, and follow-up phone calls to check status. Different construction types followed different procedures, and none of it was easy to navigate. The job was to turn that into something a homeowner or contractor could actually follow.
Role & duration
Lead UX designer — I worked directly with NVE staff to map the process, built the hi-fidelity Figma screens and InVision prototypes across eight personas, ran user testing, and partnered with the EY team on the React.js web app and React Native iOS/Android build — feeding testing feedback back into the designs as it developed.
Two-year engagement, 2019 — 2021
The team
Direction came from one-on-one work with Gary Smith, an NVEnergy executive who carried the pulse of every process in the operation. Having a domain expert engaged as the source of truth is rare — and Gary was a genuine pleasure to work with, which is a big part of why the design could move with confidence.
Constraints
The old process was a maze
Different construction types followed different procedures, and status lived across phone calls, faxes, emails, texts, a myriad of forms, and sneakernet. No two homeowners or contractors were following the same path.
Designing for eight audiences at once
The portal had to serve large and small contractors, homeowners, and government entities — eight distinct personas, each arriving with different needs, vocabulary, and levels of familiarity with the process. Eight personas looked like eight flows. But a homeowner building one house and a contractor running a dozen answered the same first question: what are you building? Gary had walked every path with the staff who ran them, and his read was that the rules split the work, not the people. I checked that against the screens, and it held. Government entities had their own rules. So did gas customers in the north. That gave us four guided flows, residential, residential north, commercial and mixed use, and public works, built from one component system instead of eight forks to keep in sync.
Internal and external audiences, one app
The harder constraint wasn't technical: modernizing the customer-facing experience meant reconfiguring Nevada Energy's internal processes to match. The design had to satisfy the people using the app inside the utility as much as the customers outside it.
Process
Building the wizard through the maze
We built a wizard-based initiation flow that walks users through service setup, backed by seven dashboards that show where a project stands at every phase — scheduling, tracking, and next actions all in one place.
To hold together across 300+ screens and 1,200+ variants, over two years full-time, I built a library on Material-UI components — a shared visual system so every dashboard, form, and flow felt like one product rather than a dozen disconnected tools.
The design went through two versions (phase I and II). Between them, I kept proposing small fixes to make the app easier to read. Gary signed off. The clearest was status icons: a check for done, an hourglass for waiting, so an owner can tell at a glance what's finished and what's still sitting on someone's desk.
Outcome
The portal replaced office visits, fax forms, and status calls with guided flows people can finish on their own. Applications got cleaner, and the process got easier for staff and customers alike. And it's still in production at Nevada Energy today, actively maintained years after launch.
I moved to other projects before launch, so I never saw how many applications came through the portal after launch. What I can point to is still running. The live portal at ncp.nvenergy.com still tracks projects through the five phases Gary and I mapped, plus a Scheduling phase NVE added after I left. The app is on both the App Store and Google Play.
What I’d change: staying through the build
Back then, designers were expected to bow out once development started. I did, and the shipped product drifted from the designs. Today I'd stay through the build and review it as it ships.
