Crafting New Energy Propositions

Understanding the new energy market for a traditional gas company

Date: Summer 2019

Role: Service & research designer

Our client contacted Fjord to help rethink how their business will look in the future and find new ways to create profitable growth in the power space. They were conscious of their lack of customer-centricity and wanted to address this to stay competitive through the energy transition. On this programme I helped shape and test concepts, and worked primarily with a visual designer and a design director.

The illustration above was done by my lovely teammate and superstar visual designer Chloe Blythman.

Our client was entrenched in a way of working that solely focussed on business outcomes. They had not started to introduce ways to build around customer needs. While they brought us in to help with this, many of the colleagues were resistant to this approach and did not see the value.

We understood it was our role to educate on the value of design to help the client achieve their desired outcome. This took us on a path of deep collaboration and change centred around the customer.

A Big, Big Workshop

We kicked off the project with a lot of desk research and stakeholder interviews to prepare for a 2-day workshop. The aim of the event was to get all senior stakeholders and decision makers (all 60 of them) in a room for the first time to learn about their users and collaborate on ideas to solve their problems.

Combining diverse skillsets from strategic visionaries to craftspeople meant that we were able to take ideas from inception through to tangible solutions we could test with customers.

The overwhelming positive response to the workshop set us up for success introducing design methodologies and customer centric thinking.

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Testing our Creations

The intensive workshop produced many concepts, many of which were brand new inventions to the energy space. The client was excited to start making the concepts a reality but we helped them understand that they needed to be refined further.

I planned, conducted, and analysed a research study aimed at testing the propositions and gaining further customer insight in the new energy space. The study used discussion and stimuli to gather insights: card sorting tasks and illustrations.

Their First Glimpse of the Customer

There was a fast turn around on analysing the research in order to refine the concepts before a team was mobilised to build them. I did a few late nights and was able to present to the senior stakeholders, showing them short video clips with provocative customer quotes. This presentation was the first time they actually heard their customers speak. Being able to humanise them was powerful and they took on board the recommendations proposed.

We helped build a value for design by putting customers at the centre

Using customer insights, we articulated concepts that would deliver against the value opportunities identified.

We brought to life our client's customers through personas based on customer mindset studies and designed interactive journey maps to demonstrate how the new value opportunities would be experienced by customers.

We then tested these concepts with customers to validate the desirability and to understand their expectations around Shell being a provider of these solutions.

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