DTE Energy introduced its IoT home energy management app and device system but they weren’t getting the customer traction they had anticipated. They decided to work with our PX Venture Studio to nail the use case and get consumer traction.
The venture we created solved the user engagement challenge. In fact, it was so successful they were able to license it to other energy utilities.
In 6 months, we turned a heavily-downloaded but only one-time-use app into a sticky service experience users wanted to engage with over and over. This led to reduced energy usage, and created a secondary revenue stream for our client.
The first job was figuring out what homeowners really wanted from an energy management solution. We found our early adopter by observing them in their home environments. This included all the distractions that are typically present.
Our early adopter viewed energy usage as part of managing the home. We mapped that journey with all it's highs and lows. To ensure relevance to users, our design principles focused on enabling the broader home management experience, not energy consumption per se.
With clear design principles, we went back to target users to enroll them in co-creating the ideal experience. We saw how the initial app experience only opened the door, but didn't let them walk through it. An engaging solution would need to let them take action, and see the cause-and-effect.
This led to a live test of the full experience, but with a limited set of users. In this way, the venture could validate the experience without building a fully-functioning back-end. We ran the trial for 60 days to see how engagement changed as the novelty wore off.
To truly meet requirements for the connected home at scale, the energy solution required open APIs, hardware interoperability, and service support that exceeded the scope of a regional power utility. We convened the appropriate third parties and spun the solution out, where it could adapt to evolving homeowner needs while still meeting product team’s goals for proactive energy management and planning.
