Sunrun One: Redesigning an Internal Sales Platform to Drive Momentum in Complex Solar Sales
As the primary visual designer on the team, I owned design for Sunrun One, an internal tool designed to simplify communication and improve process clarity across sunrun and its customers
Industry
Renewable Energy
Client
Sunrun (via AKQA)
Platforms
Tablet, Mobile
Team
Creative Director, UX Director, Associate Design Director, Copywriter, PM, and additional design support
Focus
Sales workflow clarity, deal visibility, customer presentation tools
Original Sunrun One app, prior to the redesign.
Part of the new Sunrun One Redesign.
Results
1.3B
Annual recurring revenue (ARR)
+33k
New Customer Additions year after redesign
1M+
Customers after the redesign. The first residential solar company to reach this milestone.
Increased Customer trust & Industry Leadership
4.8 average rating on 3,600+ reviews after the redesign
Best Company Recognition
Context
Sunrun’s field sales representatives rely on Sunrun One to manage prospects from first conversation to installation.
However, as the business scaled, the internal platform became fragmented and rigid making it difficult for reps to guide customers confidently through long, complex sales cycles.
Our mandate: redesign the internal sales experience to improve workflow clarity, increase deal visibility, and empower reps to move prospects forward with confidence.
Project Goal
Design and deliver a streamlined Sunrun One sales workflow that enables reps to clearly track deal progress, take the right next action, and confidently guide homeowners from first conversation to installation.
The Tension
Solar adoption is a long, high-trust, high-investment decision that unfolds over months of uncertainty. Field sales representatives must guide homeowners from the first knock to final installation, balancing relationship-building with complex financial and technical details.
As Sunrun scaled, its internal platform, Sunrun One, became fragmented and cognitively demanding, forcing reps to navigate disconnected tools mid-conversation. This growing system complexity contributed to declining signed customer numbers and an average sales rep tenure of just three months, revealing critical friction within the sales experience.
Recognizing this friction, we saw an opportunity to give reps a clearer, simpler way to see each deal and confidently move customers forward.
What we learned
Through stakeholder conversations and workflow analysis, we uncovered three systemic challenges that were slowing momentum, creating confusion, and increasing cognitive load.
Major Issues
Fragmented sales experience
The app had evolved into a stitched-together system of disconnected tools with rigid navigation. Reps were forced to jump between interfaces mid-conversation, increasing cognitive load during high-stakes customer interactions.
- 50% drop-off during the consultation phase
- Only 3% of leads converting to installation
- Fragmented tools slowing sales momentum and follow-through
Long lead times and unclear progression meant prospects frequently disengaged before reaching installation. Because information was scattered and progression unclear, reps had to mentally reconstruct where each deal stood. Customers, in turn, sensed hesitation and ambiguity during conversations. The issue wasn’t simply usability; it was cognitive burden across a long, complex purchase lifecycle.
Low process visibility
Neither reps nor customers had a clear understanding of deal progression. Long lead times led to stalled momentum and disengagement.
Design system constraints
The design system was built primarily for print collateral, not for interactive digital experiences. Translating static brand components into dynamic workflows introduced usability challenges.
Primary Users
Sunrun One has 2 types of users, each with different goals and levels of solar energy understanding
The central question became:
How might we create a cohesive, flexible system that supports structured workflows and dynamic, real-time sales conversations?
Design Strategy
Given technical constraints and stakeholder expectations, we defined four strategic pillars:
Our Opportunities
1. Shift from Task-Based to Milestone-Based Navigation
Instead of isolated screens, we designed around deal progression, making momentum visible and actionable.
2. Prioritize visibility over feature expansion
Rather than introducing new functionality, we focused on clarity, surfacing key data at critical moments.
3. Adapt, don't rebuild
A full design system rebuild would delay delivery and increase stakeholder risk. We chose to adapt existing components and introduce new patterns only where usability friction was highest.
4. Reduce cognitive load at every stage
We focused on reducing the mental effort required to: Understand deal progression, Identify next actions. Explain process steps to customers. By restructuring navigation around milestones and surfacing only the most relevant information at each stage, we aligned the interface with the rep’s mental model rather than the backend system structure.
Experience Goals
Flexible
Adapts to users’ varying needs based on user type, regions, etc.
Simple
Low barrier to entry with clear language, intuitive design and navigation
Motivating
Is engaging and supportive in the right moments and visually enjoyable to use
Empowering
Enables feeling of control through visibility and optimization tools
Consistent
Allows for consistent and seamless experience for customers and reps
Introduce a Real-Time Progress Tracker
Reps struggled to anticipate customer needs.
I designed a milestone-based progress tracker that:
- Surfaces key acquisition stages
- Clarifies next steps
- Provides both rep and customer-facing visibility
Tradeoff:
We debated increasing backend automation versus simplifying surface clarity. We chose clarity first, empowering reps with better mental models before introducing additional complexity.
Redesign the Sales Rep Dashboard Around Immediate Action
The original dashboard lacked prioritization.
The redesigned dashboard focuses on:
- What needs attention today
- Upcoming appointments
- Conversion metrics
- Performance visualization
I led the data visualization direction, creating a clear performance summary (doors knocked, conversion rate, contracts signed) so reps could quickly gauge momentum.
Improve Customer Presentation Tools
Customer-facing moments were overwhelming and information-heavy.
We redesigned bundle presentations to:
- Simplify pricing explanations
- Highlight savings visually
- Maintain brand consistency across tablet and desktop
Constraint Navigation:
Balancing brand integrity with usability required selectively evolving design patterns beyond the existing system guidelines.
Iteration & Phased Delivery
Due to resource constraints and system complexity, we implemented a phased rollout:
Phase 1
Core workflow clarity & dashboard improvements
Phase 2
Customer presentation refinements
Phase 3
Data visualization and pipeline enhancements
Breaking delivery into phases allowed us to: demonstrate progress early, build stakeholder trust, and iterate based on internal feedback.
Outcomes & Impact
The redesign reduced friction across a complex, multi-stage solar purchasing journey — improving visibility for both sales representatives and customers.
Prior to redesign:
- Reps lacked clarity on deal progression
- Customers had limited visibility into where they were in the installation process
- Fragmented tools disrupted sales momentum
The redesigned experience introduced milestone-based visibility across the entire lifecycle from initial consultation to system design, usage analysis, and final installation.
In the year following the redesign, Sunrun reported:
+33,000
Customer Additions
While growth cannot be attributed to design alone, the improved clarity, workflow cohesion, and customer-facing transparency directly supported sales momentum and reduced drop-off across long purchase cycles.
Internally, the system shifted from a fragmented toolset to a unified sales enablement platform, aligning reps, stakeholders, and customers around a shared understanding of progress.
Lessons Learned
1. Internal UX is Customer UX
What began as a tool for reps directly impacted how customers perceived clarity and trust.
2. Constraint Drives Strategy
Adapting a print-focused design system for digital interaction required deliberate prioritization. Not every pattern needed reinvention — only the ones that blocked usability.
3. Progress builds trust
Phased delivery created momentum with stakeholders and allowed design to remain flexible as learnings emerged.
✿
© Kristina Selinski, 2026