Use AI to provide personalised task suggestions to help them enjoy their life and work while saving energy. Giving timely notification to help prompt them into positive work/energy habits.
Personalised AI Routine Assistant
Give an at-a-glance view of energy consumption data with an intuitive dashboard. Through supplementary information, this element allowed for long-term monitoring of progress and energy education.
Intuitive Dashboard
Seasonal roundups give the user a fun update of their energy and work behaviours through a persona. This was seen as a softer form of reward than a score, more aligned with their ambitions for self-improvement than competing.
Inspiring Roundup
The EDF Switchy App
My team worked with EDF to fulfil their brief, to develop an app/product for their customers that leverages their life changes to spur energy and money saving habits.
Introduction
The Brief
The EDF Brief outlined the opportunity that; '...interventions that coincide with changes in living situations offer a unique opportunity for long-lasting improvements.' Therefore, the Goal became to '...identify ways of developing products, services and systems to leverage life course changes to encourage energy-saving investment and behaviours.'
The Process
The project loosely followed the double diamond development strategy, initially working with EDF to define the brief’s focus, then letting tactical questions lead discovery through secondary and primary research.
The define stage was critical for the team to map and develop a united vision, with a sprint process used throughout the development and delivery stages, iterating where necessary, and receiving feedback to find an outcome best suited to the client.
Research: Discovery
Considering the scope of the project, the team initially used 5W1H brainstorming to consider what ‘life change’ to choose. With a focus on transitioning to working remotely sparking everyone’s interest, as it engaged an emerging dynamic with energy habits. A prioritisation matrix was used to sort assumptions and form questions, to be explored in secondary research and primary user research methods where needed
Narrowing Focus
We interviewed 6 participants that had experience transitioning to a hybrid or fully remote job, getting them to discuss their motivations and pain point through this experience. To give structure and prompt recall, they each filled out a timeline of the events during this change. 4 of the users still working remotely also completed a diary study to explore their energy use habits and routines more directly.
User Research
Research: Define
The team brought our findings together to consolidate information and build a joint understanding of the user and context we were designing for. A persona and a user journey laying out the key steps of transitioning to a remote job were sketched and refined. The user journey was particularly helpful as working with this format highlighted a critical split in the eventual success of a remote work transition. All participants noting their frustrations and challenges seeking the 'work/life balance’ they expected from remote work.
This was highlighted by the team as a space of opportunity, where users will be actively seeking change that could be aligned with energy behaviours.
Analysis of Research
Design: Develop
The design stage of this project followed a sprint format, to efficiently move through ideation and development. This process was amended slightly to fit client timelines and delivery needs. I took the lead through this process working to facilitate collaboration.
Sprint
The team was having trouble narrowing down the focus of the project, seeing this I moved the team away from strict mapping techniques to more flexible brainstorming to move forward. With a simple ven diagram being used to make the two key elements of the brief visible for the team, these being the business goal of cutting/shifting energy use and the users needs related to their work from home transition.
Looking at how these insights interacted a how might we statement was constructed to lead design work. Acknowledging the unique position remote workers have to switch energy use as peak times comform to the traditional work day, with peak times coming as people return home.
1. Mapping
From this question the team used sketching to begin to get ideas down through a version of the crazy 8 ideation technique, and share them with each other.
2. Sketching
3 concepts became prominent through this process, these 3 ideas were kept vague at this stage and discussed in line with the briefs dual aims. Idea 2, a work and energy routine planner was selected as it was felt to offer more holistic influence and be a format workers are more familiar with adopting.
3. Decide
The features this application would need for success were developed as the selected idea was refined. The prioritised features included an AI-powered assistant to give recommendations for energy shifting and notifications to correspond with energy/break tasks. Using AI was seen as desirable as it could learn and adapt to the individual’s energy/work habits and changes for grid demand, though the extent of AI use was seen as being variable depending on feasibility.
Key questions in these decisions were:
-
How much control should the app take or the user have?
-
Should there be a communal/social element to help with the isolation of remote work?
-
How involved should the EDF branding/company be?- Trust
-
Is this understood as an energy app with a routine planing function or a routine planing app with energy elements?
Design principles created alongside the user persona were helpful in beginning to work through these questions pre-testing.
We further developed the concept through a prototype storyboard, going through the main steps of the concept. It was decided to use a storyboard as showing UI was seen as potentially distracting from the broader questions being asked at this stage.
4. Prototype
This prototype was shown to remote working participants, getting them to move through the steps and consider how it would fit into their day. With their comments being taken forward to develop the concept further.
5.Test
Design: Deliver
The Solution
The team put the users feedback together and further refined the feature set of the app and how the main user case should operate. With team members splitting off to address different elements, including initial wireframing of UI. Although in this project UI was seen as less central to the outcome than the concept, and therefore were used more as illustrations of the idea.
Switchy is a mobile schedule planner that integrates a user’s digital calendar with a digital energy assistant providing timely prompts to help users shift their energy use, while establishing good habits for a healthy work-life balance, setting them up for success in their new remote/hybrid role.
