A new language for flexible solar energy services

 The Challenge

Despite the fanfare of the merger and some promising early results, four months on there were concerns over the new proposition. Social Energy/Levelise (SE/L) felt it was not ‘landing right’ with potential customers.

As a member of BEIS’ Innovator Support Programme, SE/L questioned how Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) may help. With a new tariff launch on the horizon, we needed insights, and quick!

The Approach

To meet time constraints, I recommended a one day workshop and evening focus group to provide rapid feedback.

I led the design of the workshop and facilitated the day sessions to provide a handover to our research team for the evening’s focus groups. I chose our project manager (who owned solar panels) and our research lead to sit-in with each team and act as link to evening sessions. This provided extra firepower and help in keeping the teams on track.

I’d learned, from previous workshops on innovative products, the challenges of language and cognitive buy-in can be significant. Before you can refine your language – you first need to understand who you are talking to. So my first question was: Who is your target demographic?

Meet Debbie and Eddie

After our kick-off, I created two proto-personas (assumptions-based). These acted as a lens for the team to approach new design decisions and guide subsequent discussions.

Rather than a demographic-based persona, we used a needs-based persona. Data and anecdotal sales information provided by SE/L proved two consistent themes. Meet Eddie, an existing solar panel owner and Debbie, who is considering solar panels.

Framework

I created a mixture of activities to guide the workshop from proto-persona to a wireframe to get early feedback.

Design The Box
Two teams created a name for a new product or service and then designed what imagery and information to include on their cardboard box.

Learning
Senior team members recommended I remove this from the workshop. Their concerns related to potential for embarrassment if the two companies had divergent ideas. Yet, this was exactly the reason I wanted to start the day with this activity. I blended the two teams so if there was any divergence on their products and services we would resolve these issues at the start of the day. Apart from the fact, it is a fun ice-breaker.

Value Proposition Canvas
Two teams took a persona each and then used post-it notes to map features of product/services to user jobs/tasks. Using the Jobs To Be Done framework, I coached the teams to use their persona to figure out what jobs and tasks they’d want to accomplish.

Learning
I’ve found that drawing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helps the team to create a more comprehensive result. Once we had mapped both personas, we then clustered the post-its notes from both personas. It was at this point, that there was a penny-drop. A member of the team shouted – “Aha! We have two propositions!”. This was a great insight to gain and the team quickly agreed which proposition and key messages to focus on.

Results & Learnings

In a day, we had started with a sketch of who Eddie and Debbie are. By the evening, we had detailed feedback from real ‘Eddies’ and real ‘Debbies’.

Furthermore, we also understood that Eddie and Debbie each required their own proposition.

SE/L had a new outlook on what should come next. So much so, SE/L amended their launch slide-deck on the way back from the workshop, so it was part of their new tariff launch the very next day. Our team created a suite of outputs for SE/L to share with their stakeholders. The prototype products, value maps, proto-personas and wireframe articulating what should come next.

Personally, I had learnt a lot about timings – the ebb and flow of the day and tailoring your activities to suit. This also links to introduction of subject matter experts at the right time. I’m confident this workshop (with a few tweaks noted above) will help other new propositions.