At DCP, two important primary users are responsible for generating the majority of the company’s revenue. Gas Optimizers, who schedule the amount of natural gas available for sale on a daily basis, and Market Traders, who sell that gas to the market daily.

Both of these roles were using outdated software which required a significant amount of manual data entry, manual calculations, and reliance on instinctive industry knowledge. This was an unstable and subjective process with a high risk for error which in turn, could affect the company’s bottom line.

Our goal was to standardize processes and build software which would provide accurate data, remove manual input, and create auto-calculations for both the Optimizers and Traders.

We led the team through our UX process to accomplish just that.

We conducted empathy gathering sessions with Optimizers and Traders, giving them a voice to express pain points they experience while using the current process. We also interviewed stakeholders and SMEs to obtain deep insight into various gas processing industry procedures.

We then sent the designers on a tour of a gas processing plant so they could see first-hand what it takes to keep gas flowing safely. The designers were then tasked to build journey maps and task flows to identify how our users (employees) interact with the data and the logic behind the processes.

Next came wireframes and an interactive prototype for usability testing which was performed early and often with Optimizers and Traders to validate our solutions.

The new Gas Scheduling System (GSS) application was launched with great success. Optimizers received training on the new process and how to use the new web app. Auto-populated data fields and auto-calculated imbalance volumes reduced the Gas Optimizer’s time on task by 420+ hours per month. The user error rate was significantly reduced as well.

The new UI allowed both the Gas Optimizers and Marketing Traders to perform their jobs with increased accuracy and efficiency resulting in reliable Available for Sale numbers that contributed to increased gas sales and thus, increased revenue for DCP.