Volt by Freedom Forever is a lead management and canvassing app built for solar sales teams—door knocking tools, lead management, territory assignments, competitions, leaderboards, and more. I was the lead designer on Volt from day one: launched the MVP, led two redesigns, and rolled out numerous new features over three years. I initiated user surveys and focus groups to get real insight from the people using the app every day. Out of a 1 to 5 satisfaction scale, the majority of our users consistently gave Volt 5 stars.

Over the past year, I dove into AI-empowered front-end engineering as our product and engineering AI infrastructure took off. So when it came to redesigning the app for Volt 2.0, I took the reigns and built out the full design system in code, implemented the entire UI/UX update, and developed AI-powered tooling the dev team used to ship faster and implement design more consistently. This case study goes into more detail on the Volt 2.0 rebrand.

Solar University was an in-house Learning Management System (LMS) kicked off by our PM and a senior developer while I was still heads-down finishing the Volt 2.0 redesign. The business case was obvious: we were paying $20,000 a month for Docebo, a clunky third-party training platform that was prone to technical issues out of our control. It was also one of the first touch points reps had with our system—the final onboarding step required in order to fully access Volt and start selling. Building an in-house LMS would have been time prohibitive just a handful of months prior, but with AI we could do it ourselves in a fraction of the time.

This also meant the PM and developer could move fast with AI handling the early design scaffolding. I knew if I didn't get my design input in early, the product would get too far down a road without it. Online learning UX is something I'm genuinely interested in so I made sure to carve out some time. Over the course of one evening and into the next day, I conducted a compressed design process: a full UX audit with AI-assisted note-taking, an AI-research and brainstorm session that both validated my instincts and surfaced new ideas, and a working prototype delivered in roughly half a day.

Gamification in Volt was a longtime goal based on the fundamental understanding of how solar sales reps are wired and motivated. Over the years I was asked to design goal and stats pages, competition features, and leaderboard views. The more fully realized version — a badge system with digital rewards, haptics, and sound — was the one we almost shipped before the company filed for bankruptcy. This case study is about that work: the philosophy behind it, the design exploration that preceded it, and the moment I used data to catch that we were about to get it wrong.

The badge system wasn't a standalone feature — it connected to a native notification system, an admin tool for managing badge content, and a social wins feed. Those connected pieces were also the first real test of the Volt 2.0 design system and my new AI-powered workflow in practice. What I found was a faster, more direct path from design intent to shipped code.