UX
UI
Focus groups informed UK Power Networks that their energy saving tool for domestic customers lacked any personalisation and provided no real benefit.
We began by reviewing the user research and carrying out a competitor analysis to get a full picture of the landscape. From this, we wrote our goals for the project and a problem statement as well as prepared a new list of requirements.
To unlock some ideas and we used ‘How Might We’ statements such as “How might we tailor the tool’s advice to make it relevant and personalised for different user types, such as tenants and homeowners?” and “How might we help users overcome financial or logistical barriers when taking action towards energy saving?”. This provided us a good foundation to begin create the wireframes.
UK Power Networks were particularly fond of this project and as they had recently spoken directly to users we held a workshop to align with them on the goals and problems we were trying to solve and brought them into the process of honing in on the solution. We went through the whole user flow for the new tool using the wireframes to give the best picture of the solution we were proposing.
The tool we created was highly personalised, allowing the user to enter information about their home and living circumstances and receive a list of actions they could take to reduce their energy costs, improve the carbon emissions and increase their home’s energy rating. Other tools from competitors provided a similar service but we felt they failed in helping the user create a clear mental model of the tool. I.e. it was difficult for the customer to understand how refining their plan, adding and removing actions, was influencing their plan cost and plan outputs (energy cost, carbon emissions and EPC rating).
To improve the usability, compared with similar tools, we designed the plan page to mirror a simple calculator with key outputs at the top and interactive elements underneath for refining the plan. The cost was clearly shown underneath their list of actions (energy saving measures). We also kept all the personalised aspects of the plan together and accessed through tabs. These included tailored advice articles and the results of the benefits and grants eligibility checkers.
Another advantage of this tool over competitors was the inclusion of lifestyle changes to the plan. A key goal was to make this tool inclusive regardless of financial means. We created an appliance calculator that determines a users energy costs for different appliances and outputs tips to make savings. Users could then add the total savings for each appliance to their plan.
