Halvard is the dashboard that turns a community solar co-op's raw production data into numbers members actually trust and return to. The redesign replaces a spreadsheet-style MVP with a clear, confident interface built to scale from one co-op to twenty, without losing the volunteer treasurer who has to make it balance every month.
Overview & Goals
- Replace the table-based MVP with a dashboard members open and understand in seconds, even after months away
- Give volunteer treasurers a settlement flow that produces accountant-ready exports reliably on older tablets
- Architect the interface so it scales cleanly to twenty additional co-ops without redesign
- Ship the annual statement in time for January, matched in clarity to the monthly member view
Budget & Timeline
Work begins with the member view, redesigned and shippable within six weeks since it is what most members will judge Halvard by. Treasurer flows, including settlement and export, follow and are due by the end of the quarter. The annual statement template is the final piece, finished with enough runway to go out cleanly in January.
Target Audience
Two very different users share one dashboard: members who log in a handful of times a year expecting one clear number, and retired volunteer treasurers running monthly settlements on aging tablets with no patience for fragile software.
App & platforms
- Platforms
- Web app, Tablet
- Stage
- MVP exists
- Core flows
- The member view: what my share produced this month, what it saved me, what I owe or am owed. The treasurer view: the monthly settlement, exported in a form the accountant accepts. Adding a member and transferring a share when someone moves away. The annual statement every member gets in January.
- Constraints
- Accessibility requirement, Existing backend
Style
Colour
Direction chosen
Cool & trustworthy
The blues people associate with banks, software and being in safe hands.
Examples of the mood, not the colours anyone has to use.
In the client's own words
Halvard is a dashboard for community solar cooperatives. A co-op owns a roof, forty members own a share of it, and every month somebody has to explain who produced what and who owes what. Today that is a spreadsheet emailed around by a volunteer treasurer. We have a working MVP with three co-ops on it, built by our own developer with no designer involved, and it shows: everything is a table, the numbers that matter are three clicks deep, and members log in once and never return. We want the redesign before we take on twenty more co-ops.
Scope & Deliverables
- Member dashboard redesign centered on one primary figure per visit
- Treasurer settlement flow with accountant-ready export, tablet-optimized
- Member add and share transfer flow
- Annual statement template for January distribution
- Two dedicated chart systems, one for production data and one for money, kept visually distinct
- Accessible, scalable component set built on the existing backend
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design the member view for someone who opens it four times a year and remembers nothing from last time
- Keep one chart style for production and a separate one for money, never blended
- Build every treasurer flow to work smoothly on an old tablet
- Respect the existing backend and check with the developer before requesting new fields
Don't
- Do not build a dashboard of a dozen widgets when most members want one number
- Do not assume treasurers have a new device or fast connection
- Do not require new backend fields without asking first, there is one developer
- Do not let the production chart style bleed into the money chart style