Planning

Planning

Research

All the research for this idead can be found at: http://newbloodnpowerbymt.blogspot.co.uk/

nPower Brief 

"Give customers a reason to engage with energy"

"Design an app that helps people use their energy more wisely, which at the same time is fun or interesting. There must be a stand-alone reason to use the app, in addition to it being functional."

nPower wants an App to solve customer's everyday life needs, they want me to focus on a customer in a particular group, situation or scenario. The App would need to combine data (nPower + Third party or Device data) in other to provide information to customers so they can manage and control energy usage.  On the other hand, nPower aim to identify customers to offer and install personalised energy saving products by gathering information from them.

The App would be based on gathering information from customers by providing weather forecast with a energy focus challenges. nPower stablished some considerations:

• Time of life.
• Benefiting from government schemes.
• Removing the hassle.
• Third party or Device data.

App proposal

Purpose

To help people to plan everyday tasks and save energy by providing an accurate weather forecast from crowd sourced data from users, comparing energy usage with the neighbours and completing energy saving challenges.

Goal

1. To engage people by allowing them to crowd source weather data.
2. To give control to the people by customizing the weather information to be displayed in the App.
3. To engage people with energy by providing an estimate of energy usage according with changes of Temperature and comparing energy usage with neighbours, so the user would be willing to take the challenges.
4. To change people behaviour people with energy by providing Energy Saving Challenges from no cost low effort task to high investment tasks.
5. To collect data from people in order to create new energy savings challenges.

Audience

http://www.wunderground.com

• Income: 17000-40000
• Education: Secundary to University.
• Number of people in the household: Any.
• Age: 34 +
• Social:
• Social media
• Social pressure and recognition.
• Crow sourcing.
• Sharing.
• Online community.
• Networks.
• Interactions.
• Own impact or contribution to the whole.
• Collective switching program.
• Content:
• Give to them what they value.
• Believe on others recommendations, proof of success.
• Personalised content.
• Meaningful information.
• Simple.
• Self explanatory.
• Always On:
• Online: mobile, tablet, desktop and smart TV.
• Connected.
• Technology: 
• Tech savvy
• Wearable tech: Smart watches, Body monitor
• Smart devices: Smart thermostat, smart scales
• Gaming:
• Thinking.
• Mechanics.
• Smart meter => try to beast it and beat themselves.
• Define achievable challenges.
• Friendly competition.
• Engage user by solving problems.
• Intrinsic motivation.
• Communication Channels: Email, Mail, Web and SMS mainly.
• Profile:
• Need of savings.
• Control: Decide for themselves weather and how to take actions.
• Motivators: Social Prestige, Decrease personal environmental impact and to have control on heating/cooling their houses. Decrease energy bill and more money for your pocket.
• Comparison: (powerful monitor)
• You
• Your neighbours
• Efficient neighbours
• Smart Energy Grid
• Loyalty programs:
• Recognition. "We thank you for using less"
• Discounts.
• Rewards.
• Engagement and reinforcement.
• Energy related needs:
• Social and entertainment energy experience.
• Simplify.
• Personalise energy insights and products.
• Compare with last bill => savings.
• Simple improvement to save energy.
• Tips as weather change.
• Tips with no investments.
• Simple improvement to save energy.
• Allocate more of their income to essentials need beyond energy.
• Turn on/off to save.

How "App" fit the nPower Brief 

I will design an App for Android and IOs (Tablet or Mobil). The App purpose will fulfil customer's everyday life need to plan their day by providing accurate weather information for them to plan their activities for the day.  The customer will be able to customise the weather information that they need to appear on the screen, according to their needs: Outdoor activities, Indoor activities (washing, cooking, bathing, etc.) or Health (UV, Pollen and Pollution). The App will have a stand alone reason to be use (check weather), but at the same time functional as it's energy focus.

It is known that energy usage is affected by weather changes, so the App would provide an estimate on how customer's energy can go up or down according to the weather, and it will compare customer usage with people with similar conditions (Household composition, House and Local area).

The App is interesting as it will allow the customer broadcast from their devices weather data (crowd sourcing), this feature of local information will provide more accurate weather forecasts.  

The App is also fun, it will provide a comparative energy usage that will encourage user to take energy saving challenges/quests (gaming thinking) to the customers in other to beat their neighbours or themselves.  They are going to be design based on "Behavioural Grid - Green path" by levels or stages from "no cost - low effort tasks" to "High investment tasks". These challenges/quests can be energy saving tasks or ask the customer to provide household information (data requiere for a Energy report) in order to create a customer profile.  The success of the challenge will be broadcasted by online social media.

nPower will partnership with some companies (like cash back sites) to offer vouchers when users complete a challenge.

Considerations:

• Time of life. What need or want in the customer’s everyday life could the app solve? The people check the weather to plan their everyday activities,  here in UK weather is difficult to predict as there are local factor that affect the micro weather of an area.  So my solution it's to provide a weather forecast where data will be obtained from Met Office and Crowd source from devices.

• Benefiting from governments schemes. How could an app engage customers in this group in thinking about energy saving products?  Energy usage is affected as weather change, and the App offer a comparative (with neighbours or similar customers) energy usage estimate as weather change, more over the App will offer energy saving challenges tailored to customers situation.  Customer will receive a reward for challenge complete, by offering a social recognition through Social Media, and as they gain a higher levels they will get vouchers.

• Removing the hassle. How could an app engage this group of customers? The energy saving challenges include tasks that required data input from people properties, and the different stages of the challenges will drive customers to simplify the labour of filling during 30min a form.  Also, Data from Land registry would fill some of the information so the customer just will need to check and summit it.  

• Third party or Device data. How could you integrate other publically available third party or device based data into your app to make energy more relevant or interesting for customers in their everyday live?  The App will take use different sources of data:
• Weather data: Met office and Crowd source.
• Personal data: Customer data (Register process or Social media -Facebook and Twitter).
• Property: Land registry.
• nPower data: Customers energy usage, Energy Product Tariffs and Energy Saving products -savings and investment.
• Device data: Localisation, Proximity, Ambient light, Microphone, Digital compass Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Android (Temperature, Barometer, Humidity and Geomagnetic)  

Content

nPower Branding guidelines

Data: nPower data, Met Office (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/) and Land registry http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/market-trend-data/public-data.

Style

I want the App to look and feel simple to use, using visual communication and language and reducing text.  I will use a friendly language for the copy. some of the style that I will consider are:

Brand

http://npowerbrand.com

https://www.npower.com/idc/groups/wcms_content/@wcms/@resi/documents/digitalassets/ndc_brand_guidelines.pdf

Android Bran ding tips: https://developer.android.com/design/style/branding.html

Some of the point that I found interesting when power present their brand:

1. Typographic: "Bliss was chosen for its simplicity and legibility. Its shapes are soft and flowing and it has generous curves, which marries perfectly with the npower brand."
2. Copy: We avoid widows and orphans, typographically that is. We only use a single space after a full stop. Our text is always ranged left. With Bliss we don’t use anything less than 9pt for body copy and our bullet points start with lower case letters and the only full stop is on the last bullet point.
3. Logo: sit on the top
4. Our photography is customer focussed but not focussed on the customer. .... We use a mixture of full page images and cut outs, depending on the individual piece.
5. 
6. 

Flow diagram

Wireframe