Where energy meets design thinking: Aashish Solanki took the stage at EGYPES 2024 to explore how user-centered design can transform enterprise energy management for the energy sector.
Energy transition. Sustainable production. Climate-conscious practices.
These were the primary themes of EGYPES – Egypt Energy Show 2024, held in Cairo, Egypt. The event brought together Egyptian, North African, and Mediterranean government representatives, project owners, NOCs, global IOCs and IECs, international service and technology providers, EPC contractors, consultants, and financiers to discuss the evolving opportunities across the energy landscape.
Held from 19–21 February at the Egypt International Exhibition Center, EGYPES 2024 brought together more than 35,000 attendees and 2,200 delegates from across the energy supply and value chains.
The event provided a platform for discussions around global energy dynamics, the latest industry trends, regional progress, and collective action towards achieving net-zero emissions. At the heart of these conversations was the EGYPES Technical Conference, which brought together engineers, technical experts, and digital champions from across the energy sector.
Our Founder & CEO, Aashish Solanki, was among the speakers at the EGYPES Technical Conference, alongside 45 other speakers.
His talk, “User-Centered Design for Enterprise Energy Management Systems for Petrofac,” focused on the importance of user-centered design in the petroleum and energy sector.
The presentation highlighted how design and design thinking can help large energy enterprises address complex challenges while creating more efficient, connected, and user-focused systems.
The presentation drew from our work with Petrofac, a leading international service provider in the energy industry.
The journey began by understanding the key pain points faced by users and the organisation. These included:
These challenges highlighted the need for a more connected approach to enterprise energy management.
Understanding users was central to the design approach.
Through user interviews, we gained insights into user perspectives, psychology, goals, and challenges. These insights helped align the design strategy with actual user needs.
Principles of ethnography and design psychology were also leveraged to create solutions that were intuitive, dynamic, and differentiated.
The intervention involved extensive user research and digital transformation initiatives, followed by improvements to the user experience and interface design.
The work also included developing style guides and component structures to ensure consistency and usability across the experience.
The user-centered approach helped address both operational and user challenges.
Streamlined processes and real-time data access improved efficiency. Optimising software usage and eliminating redundancies helped reduce costs, while unified dashboards supported better collaboration across departments.
The approach helped achieve:
By prioritising user needs and applying a holistic design strategy, we transformed the enterprise energy management experience while addressing larger business and operational challenges.
The event was also an opportunity to represent the Indian design community on an international platform and share our insights, experiences, and learning as a design studio.
Our experience of empowering an 18,000+ strong energy enterprise with Enterprise UX provided a valuable perspective on how design can help address complex challenges within large, multinational organisations.
The conversation brought together professionals from across disciplines — from engineers and scientists to analysts and business leaders — creating an opportunity to advocate for user-centered solutions within highly technical industries.
The event also offered a glimpse into Egypt’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
With a young, tech-savvy population, increasing internet penetration, and a growing IT sector, Egypt is experiencing a significant digital transformation. As businesses and government services adapt to digitalisation, the country is embracing a new era of technology and innovation.
For industries such as energy, this transformation creates an opportunity to rethink how people interact with complex systems and information.
Design has an important role to play in this shift - not just in creating interfaces, but in understanding people, simplifying complexity, and enabling organisations to work more effectively.
EGYPES 2024 provided a platform to explore the intersection of energy, technology, and user-centered design.
Sharing the Petrofac experience with a global audience reinforced how Enterprise UX, user research, and design thinking can help large energy organisations navigate complex digital challenges.
For us, it was an opportunity to bring the perspective of design into conversations around the future of energy — and to demonstrate how putting people at the center can help create more intuitive, connected, and effective enterprise experiences.
