
Living Lab
Soft launch your product or service to check it works before opening your gates to the public. Includes 100 highly instrumented homes and a suite of modelling tools.
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

Soft launch your product or service to check it works before opening your gates to the public. Includes 100 highly instrumented homes and a suite of modelling tools.

We conducted a bespoke four-day design sprint with Big Clean Switch to help them design, build and test a digital platform that allows energy customers to make informed choices about their home energy improvements.

We collaborated with Bristol Energy to launch the UK’s first ever Heat Plan. Heat Plans allow people to pay for heating in ‘Warm Hours’ instead of traditional kilowatt hours.

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.

Back in 2014 we were early on our journey to find out how to decarbonise heating. Businesses were starting to launch smarter heating controls. We wanted to find out how people used them.

Make sure people can easily use your product or service before you launch it. Give designers the information they need to create delightful experiences.

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.

We use 80% of our energy at home for heating and hot water. This produces 20% of our carbon emissions. We need to give people the heat they want without the carbon. So, back in 2013, we built a team of leading academics and consultants to understand how people use heat at home.

Back when smart heating controls first came to market government wanted see how easy they were to use to inform their policies.

We can take responsibility for the entire design development cycle and build you a winning digital experience that is consumer-proven, technically robust and developer-ready.

How to articulate what the key value of your product and services? We ran a 1 day workshop to refine language around a groundbreaking new proposition

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.

We collaborated with Ofgem to think about the future of energy and what policy change could look like.

We hear more and more about electric vehicles every day. We see charging points for them at supermarkets and motorway services. But how do people really feel about EVs?
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.
Invite us to your Hackathons and Design Sprints…
…it’s free!
Come and see us for a friendly
chat over a cuppa.
Cannon House, 18 The Priory Queensway
Birmingham B4 6BS8
We love small print. Said nobody, ever.