I partnered with PG&E to redesign pge.com with an accessible, scalable design system that addressed critical usability gaps—especially for disabled customers struggling to pay bills online. The project bridged teams across the Bay Area and India, grounded in accessibility, empathy, and collaboration.
Pacific Gas & Electric
Empowering customers
PG&E services millions of families in California and underserved their disabled customer base. Our goal was to create a scaleable, accessible design system that would allow all customers to access whatever services or information they needed. Thousands upon thousands of webpages needed to be migrated and integrated into the new system by the end of the year–which was within four months.
Challenges
When we launched the accessible pge.com, there was little margin for error in terms of the bill pay flow and the clarity of information. We primarily focused on content clarity, color contrast, and most importantly screen reader compatibility. Fortunately, accessibility-leading design is universal design–everyone benefits from improved usability.
Role
UX/UI designer
Teams
UX, Marketing, Engineering, Copywriting
Focus Areas
Accessibility, universal design, design systems, rebranding
Universal design is accessible
I first started with understanding the customer journeys when using the site. Customers visited the site mainly to pay bills and check and report outages in their area. PG&E also wanted to promote their different programs and opportunities for more sustainable energy usage. From heatmaps to customer interviews, the team and I recorded pain points and began optimizing the journey. I was also taking inventory on the most common content patterns and interactions–taking into account familiarity bias. I worked with the copywriters and globally-distributed engineering team on constraints and limits of each component.
We successfully built PG&E with compelte WCAG AA compliance, with much of the system being WCAG AAA compliant. A significant portion of the customer base was able to complete their bill payments without problem or the aid of PG&E’s help desk.