Effortless Charging: Enhancing Usability in Electric Car Mobile Applications

Sammanfattning: In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the environment, and various efforts has been made in order to reduce human impact upon the planet. One such effort is transitioning the transport industry from using fossil-fuels to more sustainable fuels, such as electricity. This has led to a heightened interest in electric vehicles. Although electric vehicles have risen in popularity, they still face some challenges. One of these challenges is the lack of charging stations, and the hassle of charging the car. The complicated charging experience has even been expressed as a barrier, making some people hesitant to buy an electric vehicle. This calls for making the charging experience more intuitive and easy. One possible way to achieve this is by providing the drivers of electric vehicles with complementary tools, such as mobile applications, to aid them with charging. However, for these tools to be effective, it is important that they are designed with usability in mind. The focus of this thesis is enhancing usability in mobile applications for charging stations. In order to achieve this, a mobile application called Greencharge Infra is used as a case. The current design of this application is evaluated using Nielsen’s 10 heuristics of usability. Additionally, a user survey is sent out to representative users in order to better understand the user needs in these kinds of applications. Based on the findings from the evaluation and the user survey, and knowledge from established usability principles, a redesigned application is proposed. This proposal is later tested on representative users to ensure that the new design is living up to usability expectations. During the test, five criteria of usability are evaluated, these are efficiency, errors, satisfaction, memorability and learnability. The usability test result show that the new design of the application was efficient, induced few errors, was pleasant to use, and easy to learn. Therefore, the overall result of this thesis indicates that applying principles of usability in a real world case does work. The research has also led to wider understanding of how crucial usability is in mobile applications for charging stations.