Empowering utilities and homeowners with IoT devices

In January 2017, I had the opportunity to work with an energy startup building a real-time control system in the cloud. This allowed them to optimize any home smart device and control it to meet the operational goals of utility companies–helping to decrease energy demand on peak days and increase electric grid stability.

Although they were selling the product to utility companies, the real end user of one half of the product were homeowners. This made for some very interesting problems to solve for.

Utilities wanted home owners to be engaged in these energy programs so goal was to make every aspect of the homeowner experience feel tailored to them. The homeowner web app needed to be simple to use and accessible to access on the go.

Research Methods

• Stakeholder interviews
• Competitive analysis
• User interviews
• Affinity mapping
• Brand audit