Sri Charge

Section 1

The Problem

Electric vehicle charging stations exist across Sri Lanka, but there's no way to reserve one ahead of time. Drivers arrive without knowing whether a charger will be free, leading to long queues and unpredictable wait times — a friction point that undermines confidence in EV ownership as adoption grows.

Section 2

Approach

Led the design process end-to-end: user research, journey mapping, and high-fidelity UI, working alongside developers who built out the app.

• Researched how EV charging actually works in the Sri Lankan context — station types, operating models, and driver behavior — since off-the-shelf EV app patterns from other markets didn't map cleanly onto local conditions.
• Mapped user flows for the two core jobs: finding a nearby station and booking a charging slot in advance.
• Designed a station categorization system to structure how stations are organized and filtered, covering ownership, power type, automation level (manual/caretaker vs. semi- or fully-automated), plug types, capacity, and amenities.
• Produced high-fidelity UI screens and a lightweight design system (color, type, components) to hand off for development.

Section 3

Key Decisions & Challenges

• Charging stations in Sri Lanka vary widely in how they're run — some are caretaker-operated, others semi- or fully-automated — so a flat "map of pins" model wasn't enough. The categorization system was designed to surface this variation to users in a way that's simple to scan.
• Booking needed to reflect real-world availability and queuing, not just station location — this shaped the flow beyond a typical "find on map" pattern.
• Kept the core flow tightly scoped (map + booking) rather than designing the full feature set up front, so there was a clear, buildable slice for the MVP.

Section 4

Outcome

Delivered a complete set of user flows, a station categorization framework, and high-fidelity UI for the core experience. Using these designs, the development team built a working end-to-end flow for finding and booking a charging station, validating the core product concept as a functioning MVP.