On July 8 2024, Hurricane Beryl made landfall near the Houston metropolitan area. Beryl was a category 1 hurricane, the lowest rating out of 5 on the Saffir-Simson scale used to measure hurricane strength. For Houston’s electrical grid, which is managed mainly by the utility company CenterPoint Energy, the impact was anything but small.

Over a dozen people died. An estimated 2.5 million homes were left without power. In Houston’s humid subtropical climate, this meant being exposed to a heat index of 101°F (38°C) for days. Suddenly, millions of people in the United States’ fourth-largest city shared this top task: use CenterPoint Energy’s digital experiences to understand when their power would return. Unfortunately, CenterPoint Energy was not up to the task.

In This Article:

Top Tasks and Crisis Situations

Top tasks are activities that users must be able to do with a product. If users cannot do these things, then the experience has failed.

Apps and websites can be designed to enable many user activities. Identifying a short list (around 10 or so) of top tasks serves as a guiding light for the organization. What absolutely must users be able to do? How do you allocate resources to ensure those top tasks are likely to be successful in terms of design, engineering, or business investment? (Stakeholder interviews and user surveys are good techniques for determining this top-task list.)

Under normal conditions, the top tasks for a utility company might include signing up for an account or paying a utility bill. However, any organization that provides essential services, such as electricity, must always consider what their users must do when that service cannot be provided, particularly in times of crisis.

Being without power is not just about missing Netflix. Consider this hurricane situation and imagine the prospect of dangerous heat with unrelenting humidity. Your phone connection works sporadically at best, and your battery is dwindling. All stores within miles of you are closed. You are then confronted with a variety of challenges and decisions, such as:

  • Will you have to throw away all your costly refrigerated and frozen food before it rots?
  • How many restless, hot nights can you endure sleeping in your bathtub to stay cool?
  • How much more heat can your elderly dog withstand as you watch them lethargically lay on the floor?
  • Should you rescue your grandpa, who lives in the affected area and relies on an oxygen concentrator to breathe comfortably?
  • When do you decide to flee your unpowered home because your baby is inconsolably crying in discomfort? Where will you go?

Faced with such stressful, uncertain situations, the top tasks normally lurking near the bottom of that list suddenly become crucial:

  1. Does CenterPoint know I’m without power? Should I inform it?
  2. What is being done to fix my area’s power situation?
  3. If I go somewhere else, will that destination have power?
  4. When will the power return?

From this author’s personal experiences, here were some UX problems with how CenterPoint supported these top tasks during Hurricane Beryl.

Problem #1: No Outage Map

In May 2024, a different severe storm caused widespread power outages in Houston. Due to performance issues with its previous implementation (the surge in visitor traffic suggesting how important this task is to users), CenterPoint removed its outage map from its website with the intent to replace it with a new one by the end of July 2024.

This was bad timing for CenterPoint. The decision to remove this capability during hurricane season without an immediate replacement rendered these top tasks heavily unsupported. This absence left users scrambling for workarounds, such as using the ordering app from the Whataburger hamburger chain as an indirect indication of areas with and without power.

A mobile app interface displaying a map of Houston with various Whataburger restaurant locations marked by the Whataburger logo. The map itself shows major roads and highways, with traffic conditions indicated by red and yellow lines. The Whataburger locations are spread across the map, with both orange and grey logos.
When confronted with CenterPoint’s lack of outage information, some Houstonians on social media suggested the ordering app for a local hamburger restaurant to view power outages in their area. Closed Whataburger locations (those likely without power) are marked with gray logos.

Problem #2: Findability Problems with Outage Map

Realizing the lack of an outage map was a problem, CenterPoint deployed its replacement outage map. But finding the map on the website wasn’t easy at first, and it required scrolling past metrics and news posts to locate the link.

CenterPoint site detailing power outage restoration following severe weather. At the top, there is a background image of utility workers fixing power lines, overlaid with the text: “Information about outage restoration following severe weather.” Below this, there is a message encouraging users to sign up for the “Power Alert Service” to receive outage details for their home or business, including estimated restoration times. The “Power Alert Service” text is highlighted in blue to indicate it is a link. Further down, two large orange boxes display statistics about impacted customers.
Looking for outage information? This version of the CenterPoint website didn’t make it easy to find. Instead, it visually emphasized vanity metrics on how many people were without power and how many had their power restored; these are irrelevant to an affected user.
The image shows a CenterPoint Energy site detailing power outage restoration after severe weather. A black banner with a red alert icon announces that crews have started restoration efforts and mobilized nearly 12,000 frontline resources, including a link to the “Storm Center.” Below this, the CenterPoint Energy logo and an image of utility workers with text reading: “Information about outage restoration following severe weather.” A blue button labeled “View restoration map” is below the image. Further down, a blue banner has a message to the Greater Houston community from the CEO with a “Read now” link. Users are urged to sign up for the “Power Alert Service” to receive outage details.
A later web page version attempted to guide users to the outage map using a button. Note the message from CenterPoint’s CEO competing for visual attention, likely the last thing a weary Houstonian wanted to read after sweating without power for days.

Clicking that button didn’t immediately take you to the “restoration” map. Users first had to scroll through a significant amount of text detailing CenterPoint’s repair process. While well-intentioned (a neighbor might get their power back before you do because of localized line damage near your home), this content was difficult to read and verbose. All of it interfered with the top task of quickly assessing your personal power situation.

The image shows a webpage section about restoration efforts after Hurricane Beryl’s impact on Greater Houston. The header reads “Hurricane Beryl’s impact to the Greater Houston area,” followed by a prompt to view maps for restoration updates. The section includes a “Restoration process overview” diagram, with unreadable small text, detailing steps like “Impact evaluation,” “Critical infrastructure repair,” “Community infrastructure restoration,” “Neighborhood restoration,” and “Street infrastructure repair.” Additional information explains circuit-level outages, affecting over 100 customers. A red annotation highlights a long disclaimer advising users to enroll in the Power Alert Service® (PAS) for the most updated information, noting periodic map data updates and potential delays.
Accessing CenterPoint’s outage map required a lot of scrolling past unreadable process diagrams and disclaimers.

But that’s not all. CenterPoint illustrated its repair strategy across several maps. Users had to choose the correct map to view, increasing cognitive load. They then could click on the map and begin interacting with it.

A webpage detailing the restoration process after Hurricane Beryl’s impact on Greater Houston. The top section displays a current map with a red annotation. The middle section shows a “Step 2: Electric infrastructure assessment” panel with instructions for users to enter their address for restoration status. The bottom section requires scrolling to view an older map and a “Step 1: Impact evaluation and resource mobilization” panel. Red annotations indicate that users must scroll to see all information and note that small text may be ignored.
Presenting older outage maps is just a useless historical curiosity best archived elsewhere; they only increase the cognitive load on users (which map will tell me when the power comes back?) and tax unstable internet connections during a crisis, thus slowing the process of accessing the information they need, namely, the status of the repair process at their location.

Problem #3: Outage Map Lacking Detail

After the users finally arrived at the map, they were greeted with a heat map (pun intended?) of the affected areas, which was nearly all of Houston. Users needed to interact with a button control to reveal a field where they could enter their address. When they found their home, the information was sparse, jargon-filled, and provided little decision-making support. Compounding the problem were reports that the map data was inaccurate and outdated.

a map interface with several usability issues highlighted by red annotations. The hidden location-input field makes it difficult for users to enter their address. Distracting and saturated colors (green, orange, and blue) obscure the map details. The popup labeled “Customer Circuit Status: Assessment in progress” provides no actionable details on power restoration. Another map view with a “Select feature” popup lists circuit statuses like “Circuits assigned for repair,” “Energized with potential nested outage,” and “Assessment in progress.” The annotation highlights that this jargon is difficult for users to understand.
Initial versions of the map required users to click on a search icon to reveal a location-input field (top), which is the most important element of this page. The multitude of saturated colors made the map hard to read (and some color combinations such as orange and green were particularly challenging to users with color-vision deficiency). The language was jargon-laden and hard to understand (e.g., partially energized circuits, energized with potential nested outage).
A map interface with multiple issues related to displaying power outage information, highlighted by red annotations. The chart’s color palette (green, blue, and pink) obscures outages, with green making it difficult to identify affected areas. The map provides a useful legend at the bottom showing circuit statuses with dates and a “Restoration Date Pending Review” category. The green color is misleading, suggesting areas are fully energized, which may not be accurate. On the right, a popup labeled “Assessment Complete” provides an estimated power restoration date and informs users of daily restorations, but is partly obscured by the confusing color scheme.
Later versions of the map attempted to offer more human-readable communication on power-restoration efforts. However, note the misleading green color used for Restoration Date Pending Review. People in these areas have no estimated date for power restoration — a bad situation that is both difficult to discern with the chart’s busy palette and contrary to green’s typically positive connotation.

Problem #4: Vague and Intermittent Alerts

Finally, CenterPoint’s experience frequently encouraged users to sign up for its Power Alert Service, which relayed text-message alerts regarding updates to outages and repairs. Using the text-message channel is a clever tactic, as users can read texts without internet access.

In the past, CenterPoint used to provide specific, reassuring details about the status of an outage. However, with hurricane Beryl, long periods passed without alerts from CenterPoint, until suddenly the power returned. For all the detailed talk about repair-process stages on the website, communication regarding these activities was absent in these alerts.

Two CenterPoint Energy alert sets compare responses to a previous storm and Hurricane Beryl. The previous storm alerts are described as “reassuring and actionable,” providing clear timelines and specific instructions for 3,355 affected customers, with updates on repair completion. The Hurricane Beryl alert details heavy rain, strong winds, and widespread outages, stating that restoration may take several days with potential delays in updates. This message is labeled “worrisome and vague,” highlighting the lack of actionable details and an indefinite restoration timeline, causing potential concern for customers.
Even though CenterPoint’s alerts in the past were brief and actionable, during hurricane Beryl, they were verbose, vague, and worrisome. From this author’s experience, the initial messages were followed by a period of approximately two days without alerts while users stewed in uncertainty (and sweat).

A Counterexample: Duke Energy

Other energy companies (who also operate in areas affected by hurricanes) inform their users about power outages and repair efforts more effectively. For example, Duke Energy (who won our Intranet Design Annual in 2011) has a well-designed outage map that provides users with centralized, actionable details written in simple language with clear, user-focused priorities. It’s unknown if Duke Energy could handle the widespread simultaneous impact of a hurricane like Beryl, but the experience seems better-designed.

The image shows a Duke Energy outage map interface with user-friendly features highlighted. At the top, an always visible search field allows easy location searches. The map itself is uncluttered, making it easy to read. The “Outage Details” section provides clear information: the estimated restoration time is July 11 at 1:00 a.m., the crew is working on it, the cause is equipment going offline, 48 customers are without power, and it was first reported on July 10 at 8:44 p.m. The last update was at 11:01 p.m. on July 10, and outage information is refreshed every ten minutes. There are also buttons to get outage alerts and report outages.
Duke Energy’s outage map has a visible location field and provides effective, well-organized, and jargon-free communication on the critical aspects of an outage situation. The estimated restoration time is high-priority and listed first. It also provides clearly styled buttons to sign up for alerts or report an outage. Lastly, and importantly, it indicates when the map was last updated, to promote trust and reassure customers that they are not looking at stale data.

Users Do Not Care if Their Top Tasks Are Difficult to Support

Energy companies cannot stop hurricanes and the damage they inflict (putting aside the preventative work they should be doing to mitigate damage in the first place). Heroic repair crews need resources and time to inspect and make repairs, so restoration estimates will always be approximate and never as quick as a user would prefer.

However, in coastal regions of the United States, hurricanes are predictable and forecastable events. Their threat to electrical grids is well understood, and losing power can quickly escalate beyond mere discomfort and become a matter of life and death.

CenterPoint’s user experience suggests a lack of internal preparedness or priorities. Removing the outage tracker with no replacement ready and the poor execution of its substitute suggest that CenterPoint leadership believes quality outage information is a nice-to-have task for its users. Or, maybe, engaging in service design and equipping repair and support teams with easy-to-use reporting workflows so that more information can be relayed to users are perceived as too much work.

Users seldom bother checking outage information during normal times. But when the crisis hits, that top task surges to number one on the list, and there are no excuses that will mollify anguished and confused people.

a section of a highway with an overpass. On the concrete support of the overpass, there is large graffiti that reads “CENTERPOINTLESS” in black, bold letters. The graffiti appears to be a critical commentary, likely directed at CenterPoint Energy. Several cars are driving on the highway, including a red car and a gray truck in the foreground, with other vehicles visible in the background. The overall scene suggests movement and urban environment. The weather appears to be overcast, adding a muted tone to the setting.
A popularized graffito reflecting the Houston community’s frustration with CenterPoint during Hurricane Beryl. Reputational damage is quick to accumulate when top tasks are inadequately supported. Image source: Houston Public Media.

Conclusion

Companies, especially those that provide vital public services, must prioritize the top tasks of their customers, even when those top tasks are infrequently performed or inconvenient to support from a business perspective. Crises are defining moments for companies. Pass the test, and your users will endorse, defend, and praise you. Fail, and be cursed for a generation.

All companies exist to create value for their customers. When a company neglects its users’ top tasks, it has failed its fundamental reason for existence. Slowly, laboriously — yet inexorably — that company will be forced to pivot and serve its users, or it will perish.