Aurora Energy

PAYG+ Prepaid Electricity App

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Project Definition

Aurora Energy needed to modernise their prepaid electricity service so users could top up and track usage without visiting a kiosk.

This was especially important in Tasmania, where many customers faced increased hardship than mainland Australia.

My colleague and I led the end-to-end research and design of a prepaid electricity mobile app built for low-income, low-literacy users.

The Problem

Grim tradeoffs, poor tools, no control

  • Customers were going to bed at 5pm to save power.
  • Topping up required in-person visits, often far from home.
  • No clear way to track usage or know when credit would run out.
  • Existing interfaces assumed too much digital or visual literacy.
  • There was no mobile-first, user-friendly tool for managing prepaid energy.
Early Aurora prepaid app screen 1Early Aurora prepaid app screen 2Early Aurora prepaid app screen 3

My Role

End-to-end design, daily iteration and testing under pressure

  • Led product design from discovery through delivery
  • Conducted interviews with prepaid users and financial advocates
  • Ran daily design iterations based on direct user feedback
  • Built working prototypes to validate early and often
  • Advocated for accessibility, clarity, and real-world constraints
  • Designed under tight timelines and emotionally high-stakes conditions

The Insight

I initially designed a dashboard with interactive line graphs

  • We thought it was elegant, with pinch, zoom, scroll functionality
  • Users were confused, disengaged, or ignored the data
  • We learned that line graphs assumed a kind of visual literacy many users didn’t have
  • Testing revealed the core issue: too abstract, too techy
Daily energy usage screenRedesigned Aurora prepaid electricity dashboard

The Redesign

Clarity, confidence, and control… for everyone

  • Replaced line graphs with chunked bar charts showing credit used per day
  • Reframed the dashboard around clarity, not cleverness
  • Users immediately understood: “Yesterday I used $4, today I’m at $2.80. I’m doing better.”
  • Visual simplicity restored confidence
  • Paired with top-up in two taps and clear alerts when credit was low

The Impact

Dignity, Agency, and award-winning UX

  • Eliminated the need for in-person top-ups
  • Gave vulnerable users visibility into usage and spending
  • Supported behavioural change (e.g. reduced peak usage, better planning)
  • Won 2019 AIIA Public Sector & Government Award
  • Called out by Aurora for dramatically reducing support calls
Aurora two-tap top-up interface

Key Takeaways

You can’t fix what you don’t understand

  • Assumptions fail fast in front of real users
  • Visual literacy is not universal
  • The best design isn’t clever, it’s clear
  • Research must centre the most vulnerable, not the average user
  • This project reminded me how good UX can protect dignity