Brighte
Client: Brighte
Brighte is a financier of sustainable products for the home. They aim to make sustainability more affordable and accessible for all Australians.
What we did:
Developed a feature showcasing real-life people/families who had successfully made their homes more sustainable using Brighte’s products.
I Managed the 'Define' stage of the project and we were a team of four.
Why we did it:
To help new and existing customers take the next step in financing a new sustainable product.
How we did it:
Research
User Interviews
Synthesis
Design
User Testing
Deliver
The Challenge
Brighte wanted to understand their customer's needs, wants and pain points so they have a clear strategy for their consumer app. There were two possible areas that we could improve on:
Brighte wanted:
Drive a higher rate or re-use with their finance customers:
Brighte wants to create ‘stickiness’ with their brand and to be the choice that people go to when considering sustainable products for their homes.
Increase self Serve actions:
They wanted their customers to be able to complete administrative tasks on the app to reduce admin costs.
The Solution
We developed a feature showcasing real-life people/families who had successfully made their homes more sustainable using Brighte’s products.
The customer could find a story of a family who had similar household size and energy consumption and see how it had improved their lives and cut the cost of their bills.
This would hopefully help the new and existing customers take the next step in purchasing a sustainable product and therefore take out a payment plan to finance it with Brighte.
The Process
Using the Double Diamond method of :
Discover Define Design Deliver
Discover
Research
We Researched ‘Trends’ and products in ‘Sustainability’ products.
We wanted to understand customers' motivations as well as the benefits of these products to them.
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Electric Vehicles
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Solar Panels
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Home Improvements
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Batteries
Market Research, Competitive & Comparative Analysis.
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We wanted to get an understanding of Brighte’s competition. What they offer, and what their best and worst capabilities were.
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We wanted to understand how the competitors managed their customers when it comes to signing up, applications, and how they managed their customer accounts.
Green Loan Providers
User Interviews
We interviewed 12 Non-Brighte customers.
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Brighte didnt provide us with Users to interview.
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We ensured that the users were homeowners already had at least one sustainable product (such as solar panels), and would possibly consider an addition to that product (such as a battery, or an electric car).
Define
Synthesis
Affinity Mapping
Some of the key insights that we discovered were as follows:
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People were really focused on reducing living costs.
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They needed to be able to trust online resources when researching.
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People said when they retire they wanted to be as sustainable as possible.
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People were really excited to see their first reduced energy bill.
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They didn't know what questions to ask when researching sustainable products.
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They researched online for these types of products.
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When researching they wanted to know if it would be worth the money.
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They wanted to know other people experiences before purchasing.
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Users were often influenced by word of mouth.
Empathy Map
As I was managing this section of the project I was keen to suggest an Empathy Map so we could really nail down our persona or archetype.
We worked as a team and put the insights into each section focusing on ‘THINKS’ ‘DOES’ ‘SAYS’ and ‘FEELS’. completing this really opened our eyes to this user's personality and values.
Completing the empathy map really helped us to resonate with the user and made us see them as more human.
Archetype
After identifying the customer's needs, pain points and behaviours, we had a much clearer vision of our user.
As a team, we were very relieved to have gotten to this stage in the project and defined our archetype.
We knew that going through the next stages of the double diamond all our decisions would be for the ‘Money Savvy Homeowner’.
Journey Map
We really wanted to build a picture of the Money Savvy Homeowners' existing experience and journey.
We wanted to know what triggers them to start the sustainable home process and how they progress through that journey.
We worked as a team in Miro to build the customer journey
Working through this Journey Map allowed us to really pull out some pain points and discover how we can improve the experience.
This was a great exercise to really understand and see the whole picture of what this business is about.
Problem Statement
Before moving on to the design phase we had to define the problem statement.
We decided to vote for what we felt were the strongest problems we wanted to solve.
We decided on a problem statement:
“The Money Savvy Homeowner needs to have a clear idea of the return on investment, so they have a good understanding about the benefits to their future finances”.
"How Might We Statement"
The How Might We statement that came out of our discover and define stage was:
“How Might We make people feel confident in the products when they are researching the platforms and help them understand what their ROI (return on Investment) will be”
Design
Design Studio
We decided to do a ‘design studio exercise’ to get our creative minds flowing and get as many ideas down as possible.
keeping our archetype at the front of our mind we voted on what we thought were the strongest ideas.
We had four strong ideas but the one we all voted on was the following:
Peoples Experiences
This idea was to do a real-life story about a family/person who was already benefiting from a sustainable product, which would help the ‘Money Savvy Homeowner’ get a picture of how it could also benefit them. It could show a home, a family, a postcode area etc which would be the same as the potential customer.
The idea seemed to evolve with a strong opinion that it should have some form of Video content.
The purpose of the videos and the real-life stories was not only to explain how Brighte could solve a problem for them but to also help them make the decision to go ahead with a sustainable product.
We decided to link the new feature to two of the features existing in the app already (‘Get Quote’ and ‘Search for Vendors’ ) that way the user was engaging in all necessary features in the app to get them making a solid move to getting a sustainable product.
User Flow
We created a user flow of the tasks that we wanted the user to complete on our usability testing. This helped us to map out the screens we needed to create for the wireframes.
The Solution
Wireframes
We started moving from paper sketches to creating our screen in figma. We divided the section up as a team and then came together to link all our screens and ensure consistency in designs.
See the video below to view the mid fidelity feature.
Key Takeaways
Be prepared to Pivot
During the research phase we did have to pivot in this project. You need to be prepared to completely change course and just trust in the process to take you to the right result.
Client Involvement
Get the client involved throughout the process. They will give you valuable feedback on your discoveries.
Not all team members will
initially agree
Sometimes team members feel more strongly about what direction to go in, with more research to validate ideas it can bring you all onto the same page to them move forward.