Usability testing
Make sure people can easily use your product or service before you launch it. Give designers the information they need to create delightful experiences.
Discover what people really value with bespoke research
Build appealing propositions with our experienced players
Discover how consumers use your product or service
Harness innovation to reduce vulnerability to fuel poverty and design smarter consumer protection
UX/UI excellence from a team of proven heavyweights
See beyond what people say to understand what they do in smart homes around the UK
Make sure people can easily use your product or service before you launch it. Give designers the information they need to create delightful experiences.
When it comes to heating, people care more about their experience than how it’s delivered. They want to control how much they spend on their comfort, but don’t know how. If they could buy their Heating as a Service, then they choose how much to spend on their plan.
It’s hard to relate the things we do at home to the energy we use. So we use models to relate behaviour to energy.
If we want consumers to take up new energy services they must first understand them. We looked into deciphering the language around Demand Side Response (DSR) with our Home Truths® panel.
If you’re going big to trial Heat as a Service you’re going to need your own zonal-controller.
We’ve done various studies to understand how life shapes energy use. We use sensors to see beyond what people say to what they do, and models to relate behaviour to energy use.
Get rapid, cost-effective consumer feedback on your product, service or policy idea. Home Truths® is the Catapult’s online panel of 000’s of UK households.
Millions of households live with illnesses made worse by the cold. What if you could prescribe a warm home to them? We thought we’d try this out by prototyping a smart energy service for households suffering from a cold-related chronic illness.
We gathered the best in the industry to run a 1-day bootcamp-style hackathon where this super-team developed a free open-source tool to score and publicly test solutions to UK fuel poverty.
There’s growing interest in the idea that businesses could sell energy as a service. Confident we could sell Heat as a Service, we wanted to explore how to add Hot Water. We used a Design Sprint to see how far we could get in three days.
If we are to reach net zero carbon emissions, businesses will have to play their part.
We set out to understand what businesses are trying to achieve through energy management and what their key needs are to determine what an energy management solution might look like and how demand-side response (DSR) could be part of this solution.
60,000 electric vehicles were bought in UK last year. We interviewed electric car drivers to see what they thought about letting energy suppliers control their charging.
People are different, especially when it comes to energy. They want different things and do different things to get what they want. Segmentation puts similar people into groups.
As renewable energy generation grows, matching available electricity supply to consumers’ demands gets harder.
We looked at how Electric vehicles could help to balance the grid by testing DSR with domestic EV users. Can this fit into people’s lives? Or will they reject it if it takes away their control?
People often find their heating controls confusing and hard to use. Most put up with problems like drafts or damp. We knew people liked better control. BEIS wanted to find out how they actually used it, so we used our Living Lab of 100 homes to find out.
We succeed when you succeed: leverage our unique position
We are helping shape the policy landscape for the next 25 years
Matchmakers for government and entrepreneurs
Use Catapult modelling tools to validate propositions across the wider energy system
We collaborate with innovators to deliver projects that move towards decarbonisation goals
The Energy Systems Catapult is a not-for-profit set up by government to help the energy sector innovate. PeopleLab is home to our Consumer Insight team.
Find out more about the rest of the Catapult here then get us involved.
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