Your Perfect Match for Clean Energy
Case Study | 8 Min Read
My Role
UX/UI Design
Visual Design
Branding
Prototyping
Advisors
Federico Villa ↗
Johnson ‘jT’ Tang ↗
Krystal Persaud ↗
Type
Individual Thesis Project
Timeline
Jan '25 - May '25
While researching for my thesis, I kept coming back to one question: why is it so hard for renters to support clean energy?
I found that millions of renters want to make a difference, but are locked out of rooftop solar and overwhelmed by complex green plans.
Solmate is my answer: a renter-first platform that makes community solar simple, visual, and real.
A short concept video that sets the stage by walking through the renter problem, the opportunity of community solar, and how Solmate makes it accessible.
Defining the problem ⚡
Over 44 million renters in the U.S. can’t install rooftop solar. They don’t own the roof or stay long enough.
Green energy plans use hard words, hidden fees, and unclear savings. Renters don’t trust them.
Community solar lets renters subscribe to a local solar farm and earn bill credits — no roof needed. It’s a renter-friendly solution, but still underused and misunderstood.
Digging deeper 🔍
To understand this, I conducted
Most renters don’t know community solar exists.
The sign-up process is very complex and unclear.
Even after joining, renters don’t feel their contribution.
Renters get two bills, often causing confusion & mistrust.
People didn’t feel anything changed after joining.
User Snapshot 👤
I focused on one core user: someone who cares about the planet, but doesn’t know how to act.
Maya is 29, lives in Brooklyn, and works as a Designer. They care about climate change but feel disconnected from solutions.
Challenges
Maya became the lens for every design decision I made.
Reframing the challenge ⚡
Objective & Goals 🎯
Make it easy and empowering for renters to join clean energy and visualize impact.
Simplify community solar through simple design and tangible touchpoints.
Increase community solar adoption and retention by building user trust, reducing signup friction, and unlocking underserved customer segments—especially urban renters.
Introducing
Your Perfect Match for Clean Energy
Solmate takes the promise of community solar and actually makes it work for renters. I designed it alongside renters to be simple, visual, and trustworthy.
I designed Solmate in Figma and built the interactive prototype using ProtoPie. Every feature was tested with renters to make sure it solved real pain points and not just looked good.
Quickly match with a local solar farm based on your location and energy use.
Visualize your clean energy impact and share the experience with others.
One simple bill, real savings—no surprises.
The product went through 3 major iterations, each tested with renters. Every change you see in the final app came from something I heard in a test.
User testing results 👤
Just like a soulmate, Solmate is your perfect match — but for clean energy. The name blends “solar” and “mate”, capturing the warmth of a friend and the power of solar energy in one.
A modular system built to ensure visual consistency across Solmate’s app, website, and welcome kit.
A clean, focused mobile interface — built to make clean energy feel less like a utility, and more like a personal choice.
Solmate includes a welcome kit, an awareness campaign, and a physical installation that demystifies the energy grid - all designed to make clean energy tangible.
📦 Fixing 'No Sense of Start' (This was one of the pain points from our research)
🌥️ Fixing 'Low Awareness' (This was also one of the pain points from our research)
Based on feedback from 6 renters during testing, the app felt simple and easy to use.
The simplified onboarding flow dropped the sign-up time from 6 minutes to 2.5.
Most users better understood community solar after using the app.
Renters said they felt more confident in what they were signing up for.
Solmate was exhibited at NYC Design Week and the SVA Thesis Festival, where over 220 people engaged with the work and it was recognized with the Paula Rhodes Award.
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