Johannesburg, 01 Feb 2018
Energy Partners recently launched an innovative Home Energy solution. Polymorph developed a companion app, as part of this cutting-edge Home Energy system, to give users feedback and empower them to maximise what their system could do for them.
The hardware consisted of a combination of a battery backup system, an inverter, and solar panels for energy generation, giving users the option of having either the backup or the solar generation, or both. Energy Partners wanted to develop an app that would be useful to its customers, instead of just throwing all of the available data at them.
We set about working towards a minimal viable product (MVP). In this case, an MVP needed to be slick and user friendly. We were fortunate in that Energy Partners had been testing hardware installations with a select group of early adopters. This meant that we had a perfect group of users to interview who had experience with hardware installations in their homes. User interviews were followed by several iterations of UX design to come up with a proposal.
Simultaneously, and in collaboration with our design team, our development team investigated a technical solution for integrating with Energy Partners' system. Once we had a proposal for delivering content that users wanted, and a well-researched technical solution, we tested our assumptions with users again.
Technical challenges
* Representing the data so that it is not "death by chart" for the user was a big challenge for the team, as well as finding technically implementable solutions and prototyping for tech feasibility.
* Timeline and budget were constraints.
* Our developers integrated into a brand new Rest API.
* In working with a developing system, the team faced a lack of data from time to time.
Team achievements
* We experienced great teamwork with Energy Partners. Communication was very good; they really understood what they were doing and spoke the same language as us.
* Successful user testing.
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