Divvy
UX Design Studio: Innovation
About the project
Divvy is an ecosystem with a smart circuit and an application that shows consumers the specific energy consumption of every circuit and allows them to control and pay their bills directly from the app.
Time Frame
10 weeks
My role
Project Manager
Research Lead
Problem Space
Energy waste causes lack of communication and reliability between users and power companies and high power bills.
Vision and
Value Preposition
The power company can use the spare energy to transfer to places with less resources, thus educating the consumers about their energy consumption and helping them manage their bills.
Educating users on how to cut down bills would help them manage their finances better and also reduce overall energy wastage.
Target Audience
People who currently own or who are moving into modern houses
Research
Methods: Secondary Research, Interviews, Market Research, Card Sorting (open and closed), Tree Test
Our group spent the first four weeks of the project conducting extensive secondary and primary research to identify a specific problem space, target audience and the solution.
Our goal was to come up with ways of generating and spending energy effectively, reducing energy waste. For research, we consulted with several people as well as experts to gain knowledge and insight.
Insights included average bills, factors that led to high energy consumption, user pain points, solutions, alternative sources of energy and talking to experts like Hallidays Hydropower and power companies like Georgia Power.
Findings
Electricity is considered a very efficient way of energy consumption in part because it is weightless
as well as easy to distribute. However, electricity is being used daily and more than used, being wasted. Wasting energy at home not only increases our utility bills, but it strains an already overtaxed power grid, which can affect your neighbors and contribute to climate change.
An average person in the United States, overpays for and wastes energy because they lack knowledge on how to control it. This causes high electricity bills and causes lack of trust between the consumer and the power company. The power companies on the other hand lack information from the user about the user’s electric load for the house, and make anticipations on the amount of electricity that needs to be produced on a daily basis as currently there isn’t much technology for scaling large amounts of electricity.
After analyzing all the insights from the research, we come with a "How Might We" statement to help ideate for out concept:
How Might We
create a system that educates and builds reliability for customers and helps use energy in a more efficient way?
Divvy
Divvy helps solve this issue and helps people cut down their power bills. Divvy consists of two main components: a physical product and a digital product. The physical product is a smart AF GF Wifi enabled circuit breaker which can be connected to the Divvy app.
Divvy connects you to your power company, gives you real time energy consumption data and insights about consumption patterns on where you can save. Divvy also helps you control and manage your devices. Divvy provides electric consumption breakdown for each circuit, also allowing the user to split the bill if living with roommates, understand where the electricity is being used the most and overall build trust between the power company and the user and save energy and reduce your carbon footprint.
It’s a smart AF GF circuit breaker with light indication to give visual feedback besides the on-off switch. You can set your circuit to power save mode, on or turn it completely off.
