Loop Energy Saver app
In 2019 I joined Trust Power in Oxford as their Digital Product Designer, in order to focus on expanding my UX and UI design skills. Here I worked primarily on the Loop app and webapp, marketing material, Loop website and blog.
When I first stared at Trust Power, I inherited hundreds of pages of screen designs, created by an agency for the Loop app. The first thing I did was go through all these screens and figure out what we actually needed to get the product off the ground. There was a lot of fancy stuff and unnecessary gamification, which didn’t really add much to the product. The main aim of the app was to get users to reduce their energy usage, and for them to adopt green technologies such as solar panels and battery storage.
I also created the Loop brand bible, to ensure consistency across all channels yet to be created. Being the sole designer at Trust Power, I could oversee the design of marketing material, social, blog and websites.
Loop started off as an app which supported physical hardware which - when placed correctly on a user’s smart meter - would enable 10 second electricity data and 30 minute gas data to be displayed in the app. So my initial focus was to make the account sign up and setting up of these devices as painless as possible. The devices themselves needed to be very accurately placed, so the instructions in the app had to be very clear.
When the designs were handed over to me, the decision was made to remove the gamification from the app, so I had to figure out what to place on the Home screen instead of the intended user “score”. The challenge of Loop was always how to present the user with actionable energy data, based on very complex data from their smart meter.
After about a year of the app’s life, the decision was made to pivot away from physical devices to being digital only, and connecting directly to the user’s smart meter. For this I had to design the webapp where a user could find and add their smart meter, and then we had a further challenge of having to prove that the user was indeed the resident of the house that they said they were. In order to to this, we required the user to submit their payment card’s details - the address of which had to match the address where the smart meter was. So we had to instil a lot of trust, and reassure the user that we would never take any payment from their card.
We created a webapp where a user would sign up to Loop by telling us a few details about their home, and then verifying their address via their in home device, or via a payment card. Once the smart meter was successfully located, the user was then signed into a webapp where they could manage their account.
The business then decided to focus on solar partnerships, encouraging the user to contact us to find out more about solar and battery, and how such techologies could drastically reduce their energy bills. I engaged dozens of customers via online user interviews in order to test current app functionality, as well as new ideas. The feedback gathered from these interviews was also useful and encouraging.
We have several features in the app which simulate how the addition of solar and battery to a user’s home would impact their energy bills. These features were turned on via a simple and easy to use onboarding process, shown below.
The user could then request a solar quote in several places throughout the app.
The feature I am most proud of is the Home screen. The main circular “billboard” and the marketing card underneath are both animated using Lottie files, managed by Contentful. The addition of these animated assets ensured that the app looked new and fresh, as well as fun and engaging.
At it’s peak, the Loop app had over 150,000 active users, before Trust Power and Loop was acquired by the Luxion Group.
Net-Zero plan builder
The feature I am most proud of is the Net-Zero plan builder. About a couple of years after the launch of the free Loop app, we were looking to monetise, and needed to figure out a way to get users to subscribe and pay for an ongoing subscription service. In order to do this, we ran a one week long design sprint with myself, marketing, data-science and project management. With 4 of us in a room for a week, we brainstormed many different ideas on how we could monetise the app. We came up with the net-zero plan builder which would work as follows:
After onboarding, we would show the user their carbon emissions now, and then through a series of charts showing how substantial changes to their home could make it net-zero, we’d take them to the plan builder. The plan would be a timeline, tailored for the user, which would help them get to net-zero over the course of a few years. We’d show them how they could get solar, heat pumps, EVs and insulation - and most importantly help them along thew way to make this confusing process more manageable, understandable, and efficient. We’d also help source grants and fundings to make the process cheaper if possible.
If a user added Solar to their plan, for example, we’d ask them a few simple questions about their home, and then show them the impact of solar panels, as well as putting them in touch with our trusted solar partners to begin the installation process.
The feature itself with be this timeline which would be fully customisable and updateable by the user - they could move things around and get more information as needed - all with the north star of getting to net-zero.
Ultimately, we made the decision to focus entirely on adding solar to the Loop app, and the net-zero plan builder was never fully realised, but I believe it would have been an excellent feature and would have enticed our thousands of user to subscribe to the Loop app to help them get to net-zero.