All work
Contact
Energy, Victron Energy

Venus OS

One interface for every Victron system, from a weekend van to an off-grid home.

Ekrano GX display showing the Venus OS Brief screen with rings for battery, fuel, fresh water and black water
Client
Victron Energy
Years
2022 to 2026
Role
Design strategy, direction and production
Scope
UX research, UI, design system, prototyping, motion
The problem

Flexible hardware, one small screen.

Victron hardware powers boats, vans, homes and off-grid sites, and almost no two systems are wired the same way. The GX display has to make sense of all of them.

The previous interface showed everything the system knew, in the language of the people who built it. The task was to make it readable at a glance for a boat owner, while keeping every detail an installer depends on.

Research

Who the screen has to work for

Six user groups, from the family on board to the certified installer. Each reads the same screen with a very different level of technical understanding.

  1. Family and friends of end users
  2. End users
  3. Distributors
  4. DIY power users
  5. Fleet managers
  6. Installers
BasicTechnical understandingAdvanced
End user

“It should just work.”

Wants a reliable system that needs no interaction and no new technical concepts. Monitoring tools full of technical data they don’t understand were the main frustration.

DIY power user

“Let me configure it.”

Wants clear, well documented setup tools to finish the installation alone. Password-locked menus and vague setting descriptions got in the way.

Installer

“Deploy fast, check remotely.”

Wants to set up new installations as quickly as possible, monitor customer systems remotely and get notified the moment something goes wrong.

Shared by all three

Know, without any doubt, that the system is working.

Venn diagram of needs and pain points for end users, DIY power users and installers
Needs and pain points. Sticky notes from research sessions, mapped across the three core groups.
Positioning map with axes lifestyle to technical and complex to simple, with an arrow moving Victron toward simple
The direction. Victron sat in the complex, technical corner. The goal: simple to use and understand, but not simplified in functionality.
Close-up of the Brief screen: battery at 78 percent, 27.0 volts, 8.2 amps, 5 hours 12 minutes to go
Key decisions

Five tabs, from glance to detail

Brief screen in light theme with concentric rings for battery, fuel, fresh water and black water

Brief: the whole system in one look

Battery, fuel and water as concentric rings in the centre. Power coming in on the left arc, power used on the right.

Readable from across a cabin, in a light theme for daylight and a dark one for night. The ring motion was built in Figma and exported to Lottie, so it ships exactly as designed.

Ekrano GX showing the Overview screen with tiles for grid, solar yield, inverter charger, battery, AC loads and DC loads connected by flow lines

Overview: built from modules

Every part of the system is a tile: grid, solar, inverter or charger, battery, AC and DC loads. Flow lines show where energy is moving.

Because each tile stands alone, the same layout adapts to whatever is installed. That is how one screen covers thousands of system setups.

Isometric view of Venus OS screens: Brief, tank levels, generator control, inverter settings and system overview

Depth, one tap away

Tank levels, generator and inverter controls, and settings sit one level down.

Professionals keep every control they had. Everyone else never has to see them unless they choose to.

Design system

One system under every screen

A structured style guide and connected, reusable components. Design updates move faster, developers and designers share one language, and every device feels like the same product.

  • Grid
  • Colour
  • Typography
  • Iconography
  • Data display
  • Gauges
  • Control cards
  • Lists
  • Buttons
  • Modals
Exploded view of the design system layers stacked under the Venus OS screens
Process

How it came together

  1. DefineFrame the problem with Victron
  2. ResearchUser groups, needs, market position
  3. IdeateConcepts for each screen
  4. DesignModules, system, motion
  5. ValidateTest, refine, repeat
  6. DeliverSpecs, tokens and Lottie files

Ideate, design and validate ran as a loop until each screen held up.

Outcome

Shipped in Venus OS 3.50

Released by Victron as a new operating system for its newer GX devices.

Ekrano GXGX Touch 50GX Touch 70
Still from the Venus OS 3.50 release video showing Ekrano GX, GX Touch 50 and GX Touch 70
Venus OS 3.50 release video by Victron Energy. Watch on YouTube ↗