Description

Background

Terna’s vast network acts as a powerful data source showcasing how energy is transformed from primary sources into electricity, covering load, generation and transmission.

One of the client’s requirements was the adoption of Microsoft’s PowerBi as the only tool to be used for the visualization of their data. The information design consultancy was the first-step in our collaboration, allowing a deeper understanding of the data, client needs and education gap. This was followed by a detailed reorganization and positioning of the information available, improving and enriching the way data was represented in Terna’s interactive and public dashboards.

Objective

Create a useful and elegant set of visualizations to communicate information on energy production and consumption.

Result

The consultancy on data visualization allowed the client to build a more effective and usable product using Microsoft PowerBi, the standard data-visualization technology adopted by Terna.

Year:

2021

Industry:

Energy

Consultancy Phase 1 - Analyzing the state of the art

The project started off with an assessment of the client’s prototypes and included the reorganization and positioning of the information available, the improvement of the effectiveness of the visualizations used and their usability for the reader.

Our analysis was divided into four macro-areas:

User Experience (UX)
User Interface (UI)
Data Visualization
Copywriting

Consultancy Phase 2 - Exploring possibilities

The next step was dedicated to the creation of several views, each one with different aims:

Re-organizing the place for information
Evaluate the efficiency of data visualization
Evaluate the user interaction with different UI elements

Consultancy Phase 3 - Prototype design

After the explorative analysis and client feedback, the prototype was designed. In this version the European Regulators Group for Electricity and Gas (ERGEG) for South Central Europe on network transparency guidelines (see EC Regulation 1228/2003) were combined with Terna’s brand guidelines to define each element of the page design. The data covered load, energy transmission and interconnection, generation and balancing.