Immersion in hot water
(as a service)
Using a design sprint to rapidly prototype a new kind of energy service
In order to meet the UK’s climate change targets, we will have to decarbonise how we use heat and hot water at home.
In early 2019, the third Winter Trial for Heat as a Service was drawing to a close at Energy Systems Catapult. This trial provided useful insight into how an outcome based service called a Heat Plan not only was a hit with the triallists but also helped to pave a way to decarbonising the UK’s heat.
Looking forward, I knew we’d need to blueprint a whole suite of new services. Current UK policy considers how energy services can move towards a low-carbon future. Using a Design Sprint was a hypothesis, to see if we could expedite the creation these new energy services.
Methodology
Google Ventures created the Design Sprint in the mid 2010s. It combines the greatest hits of business analysis, rapid prototyping and consumer research; into one battle-tested process.
Luckily, Energy Systems Catapult has many innovative projects and big challenges to overcome. Despite this perfect environment for design sprints; none had ever taken place.
After a year of gentle nudging of senior managers who were open to it and lobbying of those who we more sceptical, we finally got 3 days agreed. So I re-tooled the 5 day sprint into 3.
Three day sprint process
Pre-sprint
Using the resources from the Design Sprint website, I configured the 3 days with a few customisations. These tweaks were to provide discussion around service parameters, availability of experts and deciders.
Given the assumption about range in domain knowledge, I organised an hour long workshop, five days before the Design Sprint. My intention was to get a feel for confidence in the team. A rowdy hour ensued with lots of discussion. The blind-spots appeared to be around existing research and hardware.
I also prepared stimulus materials for the room, so information was at hand should the team need it. We used technical diagrams of different heating sources (Combi Boiler, System Boiler, PV, Hybrid Heat Pumps). Research-wise, we stuck usage segments from Patterns of Water – Pullinger & Browne (2016) and snippets from Consumer Requirements for Hot Water as a Service – Rathaus (2018) to the wall.
Day 1: Map & Sketch (Discovery)
During a 3 day sprint format, the first day is all about understanding: What is the problem we need to solve?
I’ve found a round-table discussion with the team is always a good ice-breaker and (unexpectedly) it uncovered a wide range of habits around the team’s hot water use.
Ask The Experts
This segued nicely into “Ask The Experts”. I invited five experts to talk about: home energy dynamics, data, software development, customer research and service design. I encouraged the team to make notes during the expert’s talks using the “How Might We” method. This is a method to homogenise assumptions in order that they are later overlaid on a customer journey.
Customer Journey Mapping
After a hit of caffeine, we started to sketch out the customer journey. We overlaid the “How Might We” assumptions over the journey map to identify where the key risks were.
Solution Sketch
After lunch, we identified that the onboarding process was the most problematic and would benefit from our focus for the remaining two days. Our initial thought was to create an interactive tool or survey to understand the customer’s existing hot water usage.
Day 1: Map & Sketch (Discovery)
During a 3 day sprint format, the first day is all about understanding: What is the problem we need to solve?
I’ve found a round-table discussion with the team is always a good ice-breaker and (unexpectedly) it uncovered a wide range of habits around the team’s hot water use.
Ask The Experts
This segued nicely into “Ask The Experts”. I invited five experts to talk about: home energy dynamics, data, software development, customer research and service design. I encouraged the team to make notes during the expert’s talks using the “How Might We” method. This is a method to homogenise assumptions in order that they are later overlaid on a customer journey.
Customer Journey Mapping
After a hit of caffeine, we started to sketch out the customer journey. We overlaid the “How Might We” assumptions over the journey map to identify where the key risks were.
Solution Sketch
After lunch, we identified that the onboarding process was the most problematic and would benefit from our focus for the remaining two days. Our initial thought was to create an interactive tool or survey to understand the customer’s existing hot water usage.
Team talking through solution sketches
Day 2: Decide & Build (Requirements)
During a 3 day sprint format, the second day is all about the design and build.
Storyboard
First step was to agree on what we would prototype and assign tasks. Researchers created the survey, service designer and data scientist created the pricing matrix and designer and developer created wireframes and started development.
Service Parameter
We agreed on litres/week, as a service parameter. We needed a homogenous metric that would not be open to interpretation. We had time, so decided to conduct a paper survey around the office to validate some assumptions around hot water use and language to use.
Hot Water service sketches and prototypes
Day 3: Build & Test
During a 3 day sprint format, the final day is all about refining the build and testing.
We started day 3 with two team members down, due to illness. Undeterred, the team mobilised around a clear goal. Morale was high, following encouraging feedback to our paper survey and the web-tool development was in full swing.
Shortly before lunchtime, issues with our hosting knocked the wind out of our sails. Limitations with API access meant we had to move the web-tool to a new host. The result was that we did not have a working prototype for review that afternoon. Despite this – our decider’s review went very well. I talked the deciders through our though process and outlined a plan to deliver the next day; which was acceptable. Lesson learnt, always provision your hosting infrastructure during pre-sprint!
“We’ve been in each other’s eyes and ears for 3 days. We now feel like a team and understand each other’s role much better.”
The Result
We delivered a webtool called Water Gremlins.
We crafted a questionnaire to better understand hot water usage, due to the lack of data available. Once we had captured a user’s responses, we processed the data against a pricing model developed in-sprint. This allowed us to provide the user with an estimated breakdown of their usage in litres per week and their service banding. Finally, we could provide an estimated price for this hot water, if they buy this offer in conjunction with a Heat Plan.
Water Gremlins on a mobile device
Learnings & Update
We approached Water as a standalone service. Yet, by the end of the sprint, the team was unanimous this was not the case because:
we struggled to identify compelling pain points;
there appears to be a large cross-over with Heat Plans;
gas used to heat water is a relatively small component of overall gas usage and Energy as a Service.
“It was an ambitious task but I believe the 3 days of time has moved us further forward in designing a hot water service than I have experienced yet at Energy Systems Catapult. It has shaped how to do more of these sprints for our sometimes complex services. Job done and groundbreaking!”