Saved lives and millions of dollars by leveraging Maps technology to support helicopter inspections during Northern California wildfires, improving efficiency and reducing risks.
This was an initiative that I drove as a Lead Designer since June 2019 for the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) team at Pacific Gas & Electric Company–PG&E. I collaborated with key partners to do multidisciplinary research, identify gaps in current strategy, and assess the business and community impact.
Challenge
Power shutoffs during severe weather were critical for preventing wildfires, but restoring power afterward took too long due to extensive inspections. The challenge was to streamline the reenergizing process, which was causing extended outages and impacting communities.
Role
My role was to streamline this process, reducing restoration time while maintaining safety and reliability for affected communities.
- Lead Designer
- User Experience
- Interaction
- Visual Design
- Service Design
- Prototyping
- User Research
- User Testing
Approach
Identifying gaps in the current strategy to enable data-driven decision-making to help reenergize the San Francisco Bay Area as efficiently as possible.
- Foundational Research
- Requirements Gathering
- Journey Maps (Current & Future State)
- Experience Mapping
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Strategy Workshop
- Experience Workshop (Post-Up, Affinity Diagramming & Landscape Mapping)
- Product Strategy
- Design Prototypes
- Usability Testing
- A/B Testing
Results
I focused on improving the tools and processes already in use rather than building new ones from scratch. By leveraging existing tools with the highest user adoption and shifting from ground to aerial inspections, we cut inspection time by 60%. Through user research, I uncovered gaps in the current workflow that allowed us to optimize the process and get power restored much faster.
Realigned product strategy to reenergize the SF Bay Area 60% faster after a wide scale power shutoff.
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Context
Initial Business Hypothesis
The initial hypothesis was to reduce ground inspection times by building a web app for supervisors to assign work and a mobile app for ground inspectors to receive tasks and report completion. The assumption was that this would align with their existing emergency shutdown workflows, improving efficiency and speeding up power restoration.
The initial idea was to speed up inspections by building a web app for task assignment and a mobile app for inspectors to report back.
Gaining Field Insights Through Ride-Alongs and Patrols
To deeply understand the challenges during emergency shutdowns, I conducted user research by joining patrols and ride-alongs. This hands-on approach gave me firsthand insights into the workflows, pain points, and environmental constraints faced by the teams, ensuring the solutions we designed were practical and aligned with their real-world needs.
Key Findings
- Too many handoffs between teams for dividing, assigning, and inspecting work.
- Ground inspectors often arrived after helicopter patrols had already completed inspections and reported back.
- Communication gaps between inspection teams led to duplicated efforts.
- These inefficiencies contributed to delays in the reenergizing process.
- Inspectors had already streamlined part of the process by leveraging an existing mapping mobile app created by a team within my organization.
- The mapping mobile app, with the most user adoption, usage, and downloads, worked offline and was key to improving efficiency in low-reception areas.
Inefficiencies in Helicopter and Ground Inspection Coordination
Helicopter inspections consistently outpaced ground inspectors, often completing full circuit reports by the time ground teams arrived. A communication gap between helicopter and ground inspections led to duplicated efforts rather than complementing each other. Instead of coordinating to focus ground inspections on areas helicopters couldn’t access due to terrain or weather, both teams were performing redundant tasks.
Helicopter and ground inspections were not coordinated, leading to duplicated efforts instead of complementary tasks, as helicopters often completed inspections before ground teams even started.
Uncovering Insights and Aligning Cross-functional Teams Through Journey Mapping Co-creation
By conducting interviews and workshops with cross-functional stakeholders, I identified key players, established research goals, and gained a deeper understanding of their needs and pain points. Co-creating journey maps and process flows with these stakeholders was critical in identifying key steps, uncovering hidden complexities, and mapping relationships between departments. This collaborative approach revealed high-risk assumptions, conflicting priorities, and opportunities for alignment, allowing us to define clear goals, needs, and motivations across teams for a more cohesive and effective strategy.
Understanding the Complexity and Misalignment in the Proposed Solution
As we deepened our conversations with stakeholders—those responsible for supervising, patrolling, and reporting—it quickly became apparent that the proposed solution was becoming too complex. Key issues, like limited reception during patrols and a lack of alignment with their current workflows, made it clear that the solution was unlikely to be practical or adopted by the teams in the field.
Stakeholder feedback revealed that the proposed initial solution was too complex and misaligned with existing workflows, making it impractical for field teams in emergency situations.
Challenging the Initial Business Hypothesis
Our research showed that the original plan to reduce ground inspection times by building new web and mobile apps was unrealistic. Too many handoffs, delayed ground inspections, and communication gaps were causing inefficiencies. Inspectors had already streamlined their workflow with a widely adopted, offline-capable mapping app, making the proposed solution unnecessary and misaligned with their current processes for emergency shutdowns.
Helicopter inspectors and supervisors had already streamlined task assignment and reporting by using existing mapping tools that work reliably offline, bypassing the chaos and reception issues during emergency situations.
Uncovering Insights from Helicopter Inspections
To gain a deeper understanding of how helicopter inspections were managed during emergency situations, we conducted additional user research and participated in helicopter patrol ride-alongs. This allowed us to document the entire end-to-end journey, revealing key opportunities and pain points to improve the process.
Key Helicopter Patrol Pain Points
- Inspectors need a reliable way to identify hazards, static lines on towers, and third-party assets on the map.
- Especially in Low-contrast situations, where power lines become invisible, make this even more critical.
- Currently, identification is done by word of mouth and experience, posing a significant safety risk.
- Users require the ability to mark hazards on the map and share this information with other inspectors to improve safety and efficiency.
While helicopter inspections were highly efficient, they posed significant risks to the crew, as power lines often became invisible, tragically resulting in several fatalities during past PSPS emergency events.
Balancing Efficiency and Safety
HIGHLIGHTING CIRCUITS
Users need a “Filter Circuit” feature to highlight a circuit while still displaying nearby conductors for safety. This will help plan flight patterns without losing visibility of other assets, which currently disappear from the map.
SAFETY BEYOND DEVICE
- Users need to see the flight plan during flight to efficiently track areas that need coverage.
- Opportunity to integrate haptic features in Helicopter Mode, like vibrations, to alert users while they’re looking out the window.
VISIBILITY
- There is a need to have the Crossing Buffer layer visible at 2 miles to see the lines and crossing lines when planning and patrolling.
- Since 1 in 12 men are color blind and most inspectors are men, the color of the buffer on the map needs to be accessibility tested to ensure inspector safety.
TRACKING
When flying, users have the need to constantly know their location and direction. The current blue location dot is small and not very clear when trying to get clarity on location and/or navigation direction.
During PSPS emergencies, task assignment and patrols needed to be offline-first, relying on the mapping app, radios, and ground patrols for support where helicopters couldn’t access.
Proposed Flow
Based on these insights, I proposed a new flow that prioritized helicopter inspections, leveraging the existing mapping mobile app. This approach reduced handoffs, minimized the number of people involved, and cut inspection times by 60%. The key opportunity was to further empower inspectors and supervisors by refining the process they had uncovered, with a focus on realigning the product strategy toward aerial inspections rather than ground inspections.
While inspectors valued the mapping app, recent helicopter crashes highlighted the urgent need for improved safety features to help plan and identify power lines more effectively before, during, and after patrols.
Accelerating the Process through User Research and Early Stakeholder Buy-In
Although it was challenging at times to prioritize the design process and conduct user research, involving users and stakeholders early on paid off. By integrating cross-functional teams from the beginning and ensuring we understood their needs, goals, and motivations, we secured buy-in and minimized pushback. This collaborative approach actually accelerated the process, as everyone was aligned and invested in the solution from the start.
Context
Designing for Safety and Efficiency–Crossing Buffer Layer
Our process focused on deeply understanding the needs of inspectors through user research and collaboration with cross-functional teams. By involving users early and continuously refining based on their feedback, we were able to design solutions that improved safety, streamlined workflows, and accelerated the reenergizing process. This user-centered approach ensured that every decision aligned with real-world challenges, driving both efficiency and stakeholder buy-in.
Rethinking Circuit Visibility Based on User Feedback
In our initial design explorations, we assumed inspectors only needed to know where two electrical lines intersected. However, after sharing early drafts with them, we quickly learned that they required a full view of the entire electrical circuit at a glance, rather than just sections, to effectively plan and conduct their inspections.
Inspectors needed a full view of the entire electrical circuit, not just intersections.
User Testing Insight: Confusion from Similar Colors
During user testing, we learned that the initial color choice for the crossing buffer was too similar to another layer on the map, which led to confusion for the inspectors. This overlap made it difficult for users to distinguish between important layers, highlighting the need for a more distinct color solution to ensure clarity during inspections.
User testing showed the crossing buffer color was too similar to another existing layer, causing confusion and needing a clearer distinction.
Finalizing the Buffer Color: Accessibility and Urgency
Given that 1 in 12 men are color blind and most inspectors are men, it was critical to choose a color that ensured visibility in all conditions, including sun glare, fog, and low-contrast situations. We also had to balance this with the urgency of the inspections, ensuring the solution was both effective and quickly implementable.
We selected a new crossing buffer color for accessibility and visibility in all conditions, ensuring it worked for colorblind inspectors and met urgent inspection needs.
Adapting the Default Map View for Helicopter Inspections
User testing showed inspectors prefer a 2-mile zoom for helicopter inspections instead of the default 800 ft for ground inspections. In response, we updated the map to automatically default to a 2-mile view when the Crossing Buffer is activated, better supporting aerial operations.
User testing revealed inspectors prefer a 2-mile zoom for helicopter inspections, so we updated the settings to default view.
Leveraging Existing Behaviors for Seamless Adoption
When designing the architecture and flow of this feature, we prioritized aligning it with inspectors’ existing behaviors. Our goal was to ensure the tool felt intuitive and familiar, allowing inspectors to rely on muscle memory during emergency situations. By minimizing the introduction of new behaviors, we increased the likelihood of adoption and made the tool more effective in high-pressure scenarios.
We designed the feature to align with inspectors’ existing behaviors, ensuring it felt familiar and intuitive, minimizing new learning and increasing adoption during high-pressure emergency situations.
Ensuring Compatibility Across Map Views
It was crucial to ensure that the crossing buffer functioned seamlessly across different map views, such as satellite and topographic. We focused on optimizing the contrast of the buffer and maintaining the visibility of the underlying assets, making sure the designs supported clear and effective use in all viewing modes.
Helicopter Mode: Crossing Buffer
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Impact:
This effort resulted in reducing inspection patrol time by 60% and eliminating duplicate efforts, allowing the San Francisco Bay Area to be reenergized safely and efficiently. It not only saved lives but also saved millions of dollars for the business and customers. Additionally, the success of this initiative helped secure additional budget to build new web and mobile apps for non-emergency scenarios.
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