Doug Crissman

Category: Spruce Finance

  • Spruce Marketing & Brand Design

    Extending design impact beyond the product.

    At Spruce Finance, design was not limited to internal tools or customer-facing applications—it also played a key role in shaping how the company presented itself to the market. In addition to my product design work, I collaborated with the marketing team to support a company-wide rebrand and create collateral that helped both customers and sales teams engage with our products more effectively.

    Challenges

    • The company’s evolving product line needed a cohesive brand identity that reflected trust and innovation in clean energy financing.
    • Marketing materials—such as spec sheets and product guides—needed clearer visual structure to be easily understood by both sales teams and homeowners.
    • Customer-facing digital experiences required a consistent look and feel aligned with the new brand.

    Design Contributions

    I contributed across several key marketing initiatives:

    • Rebrand Campaign → Designed digital and print assets that aligned with the updated brand identity.
    • Website → Supported updates to the marketing site with visuals and layouts that reflected the refreshed brand.
    • Customer Portal → Designed features that gave homeowners a clear view into their energy usage and financing status.
    • Sub-Branding → Developed visual systems for product-specific branding to differentiate offerings within the Spruce portfolio.
    • Spec Sheets & Product Guides → Designed materials to help sales teams explain products with clarity and professionalism.

    Impact

    • Consistent brand identity across web, print, and digital channels.
    • Stronger sales enablement through polished, easy-to-use collateral.
    • Improved customer trust by aligning the customer portal with the company’s rebranded identity.

  • Improved Spruce Sales Process

    Guiding sales teams with the right tools at the right time.

    Selling solar and energy-efficiency projects requires navigating financing options, qualification rules, and product details—all while building trust with homeowners. To support sales reps in this complex process, I designed resources that extended beyond the core app experience, helping teams adopt SpruceFlow more easily and work with greater confidence.

    Challenges

    • Sales reps often needed additional guidance when learning how to use the platform.
    • The lack of built-in support and reference materials led to frequent calls to customer service.
    • Training new reps at scale was time-consuming and inconsistent.

    Design Improvements

    I focused on designing solutions that balanced self-service learning with in-the-moment support:

    • User Guides → Clear, step-by-step guides for onboarding and reference, written and designed for quick comprehension.
    • In-App Guidance → Contextual help and tooltips embedded directly in SpruceFlow, giving reps answers where they needed them most.

    Impact

    • Reduced customer service calls → Reps were able to troubleshoot and complete tasks without external support.
    • Faster onboarding → New hires learned how to qualify and sell more quickly.
    • Increased confidence → With both offline and in-app resources, sales reps felt more prepared in customer conversations.

  • Spruce Underwriting Tools

    Designing for speed, accuracy, and confidence in financing decisions.

    Spruce Finance’s underwriting team played a critical role in reviewing and approving financing applications for solar and energy-efficiency projects. However, the tools they relied on were complex and slowed down both training and day-to-day work. My role as UX/UI Designer was to streamline the underwriting process, making it faster for team members to review applications, apply consistent standards, and communicate approvals.

    Challenges

    • Underwriters needed to evaluate multiple data points across different systems, which created inefficiencies.
    • New team members faced a steep learning curve, increasing training time and delaying productivity.
    • Slow responses from underwriting created bottlenecks in the sales pipeline, frustrating both sales reps and homeowners.

    Design Improvements

    Working closely with the underwriting leadership team, I focused on creating a more intuitive, guided workflow:

    • Simplified interfaces that grouped related information logically, reducing screen-switching.
    • Clearer workflows with step-by-step guidance for common tasks, enabling new underwriters to get up to speed faster.
    • Error reduction through input validation and clearer data presentation, which helped ensure consistent decisions.

    Impact

    • Faster response times: More applications reviewed and approved daily.
    • Improved training: New underwriters reached proficiency more quickly.
    • Sales pipeline acceleration: By reducing underwriting delays, sales reps could close deals and move projects forward sooner.

  • Modernizing Solar Financing Tools

    Simplifying complex workflows to help reps close deals faster

    The core Spruce platform supported solar and home-improvement sales teams in qualifying homeowners, creating financing proposals, and advancing projects toward approval. As UX/UI Designer, I focused on making this complex process faster and more intuitive, enabling sales reps to spend less time hindered by technology and more time engaging customers.

    Challenges

    Designing SpruceFlow meant balancing the complexity of solar financing with the need for a clear, sales-friendly experience.

    • Complex Financing Products: Sales reps had to navigate leases, loans, and compliance requirements—often switching between different tools and documents.
    • High Learning Curve: New reps struggled to adopt the system quickly, slowing down onboarding and limiting sales capacity.
    • Slow Sales Cycle: Detailed solar designs required scheduling a site audit, delaying proposals and creating friction in moving projects toward approval.
    • User Confidence: Without clear guidance, reps risked errors or delays that undermined homeowner trust during the sales process.

    Qualification & Selling App

    Selling residential solar systems and energy-efficiency upgrades involves navigating multiple financing products, compliance requirements, and approval workflows. I worked with Product and Engineering to simplify these interactions into a clear, step-by-step app experience.

    • Reduced learning curve: Designed an interface that new sales reps could quickly adopt, shortening onboarding time.
    • Streamlined flows: Prototyped and tested different approaches to qualifying homeowners, leading to fewer errors and faster application completion.

    Quick Solar Design

    One of the most impactful features I designed was Quick Solar Design, a tool that allowed sales reps to model a solar panel system for a homeowner’s property on the spot.

    Previously, detailed system specs required scheduling a site audit, often taking weeks. With Quick Solar Design, reps could:

    • Generate a detailed view of system size, energy savings, and installation cost in minutes.
    • Show homeowners financing options during the same visit.
    • Submit proposals for underwriting immediately—cutting down financing approval timelines.

    This tool not only accelerated the sales cycle but also gave reps more confidence in front of customers, helping them close deals faster.

    Project Impact

    SpruceFlow transformed how sales reps qualified homeowners and proposed financing. By simplifying workflows and introducing tools like Quick Solar Design, the platform shifted from being a barrier to becoming a sales enabler.

    • Faster Financing Approvals → Quick Solar Design cut proposal timelines from weeks to same-day.
    • Increased Adoption → A more intuitive interface reduced onboarding time and encouraged wider rep usage.
    • Stronger Customer Experience → Sales reps gained confidence in front of homeowners, making the financing conversation smoother and more trustworthy.

    Together, these improvements modernized solar financing at Spruce—helping sales teams close deals faster while giving homeowners a clearer path to clean energy.