Why do people value energy reports?
WORK AT
ecobee
TIMELINE
March 2020 - April 2020
ROLE
User Researcher
ACTIVITIES
Surveys, Remote Interviews
OUTCOME
Identified the Jobs-To-Be-Done for energy reports and the priority data points to inform the roadmap for the new reporting feature
The Challenge
In March of 2020, I collaborated closely with the Product Manager on the Energy Services to understand the following questions:
Why do people value data on their HVAC or energy use?
What information is most important to people?
The objective of the research was to inform the roadmap for an energy reporting feature for ecobee customers.
Approach
INTERVIEWS
Interviews were conducted with 10 participants to uncover underlying motivations to answer the first question; why do people value data on their HVAC or energy use?
Participants were a mix of ecobee owners who currently use energy reporting features/tools, and those who rarely look at energy reports.
From the interviews, I was able to identify critical motivations and use cases among the participants to build different Jobs-To-Be-Done profiles.
SURVEY
Following the interviews, I sent out a survey using SurveyMonkey to validate some of the findings from the interviews and answer the question; what information is most important to people? There were about 600 respondents to the survey from which I was able to correlate the data people found most valuable with their Job-To-Be-Done. These insights informed which use cases to prioritize for and, consequently, what data was essential to that group.
A few of the questions that informed the interview script and consequently, survey questions
What ways are participants currently receiving similar data points?
What actions are taken after viewing these data points?
What is the frequency at which they look at these data points?
From an energy usage perspective, what type of information people like to see about their homes?
How would they rank these data points in order of priority?
What informs their ranking?
Insights/Impact
These insights were summarized and presented with a Powerpoint slide deck to the Product Manager, UX Designers, Developers and Data Scientists from the Energy Services team. Based on the research, the team:
Identified priority data points to inform the roadmap for the reporting feature
Developed an understanding for thinking about the way customers use and interact with data