A Macbook computer displaying a roof drawing tool where you can build and order solar panel mounts.

Weland Stål – Solar panel mounting

Weland Stål is a leading supplier in Sweden of products for roof safety and evacuation. Their range also includes railings, solar panel mounts and sheet metal processing services. They deliver reliable Swedish-made products with a long service life.

 

— Background

The sales department at Weland Stål had, as a result of the solar cell boom prevailing in Sweden, been given far too much to do. Namely, it is not only Weland Stål’s responsibility to try to get Swedes to install as many solar cells as possible, they must also make sure to do it in a safe and sustainable way.  They already had tools at their disposal in the form of advanced excel sheets full of formulas to calculate strength and material consumption, but it takes a long time and there is a risk of error when 20-30 values ​​have to be filled in correctly before finding out if the solution holds and if so, what the installation costs. They then had an idea of an online tool to help them make this process easier for both them and their consumers.

 

— The result

This resulted in a visual tool where you can make a selection on the roof where you want to put your solar panels, and see how many panels you can put there without compromising the strength and safety of the roof and panels.

I was responsible for the UX design of this tool. From first brainstorming session to the first launch and the following smaller tweaks and new features.
Due to the fact that Weland Stål works solely B2B and their customers mostly order from their own offices this solution is only optimized for desktop screens.

 

Used in this project

  • Workshop with developers (Bravomedia Web agency) and stakeholders at Weland Stål
  • Customer insights delivered from Weland Stål Sales department
  • Google analytics data to follow up and measure performance after the initial release

 

View the result (configurator)

 

Psst! Click on the button titled ”Starta ritverktyg” to start the drawing tool. Just leave the values above as it is by default, it will work just fine.