
With little time to conduct deep user research, we created a proto-persona that best captured our findings.
Justine is a busy creative who loves the outdoors, and lives in Vancouver with her two young children and partner. Last year, the family of four had bought a new home together. To help make things more energy and cost efficient at home, the family decided to swap out many of their old appliances to invest in newer and smarter products.
But one day, she noticed that their utility bills were higher than normal for the month.
As a recent mother of two, Justine has limited time and energy. To properly investigate the specifics behind the spike in energy use, would require too much effort. And her lack of time and energy also made it difficult for her to properly look into maximizing the energy-saving potential of her smart appliances.
Justine's Pain Points:
Can’t find any data on how much energy their smart home products consume.
Unable to monitor whether their family had used more or less energy overtime.
Unsure how to managet their smart home appliances to reduce energy use.
Following the user journey
A user journey map was then created to dive deeper into Justine’s thoughts and feelings. The journey follows a scenario where she had noticed a concerningly large electricity and water bill for the month, which then prompted her to investigate. From this, we were able to visualize Justine’s points of frustrations and create opportunities in the problem space.

The following were some of our primary insights:
Motivated to focus on usage: Being a parent often resulted in higher energy and water consumption usage, which motivated much of our user’s attention to this area.
Quick access: There is a need for a more seamless way to quickly access, view, and implement strategies to better manage their energy and water consumption.
Making a positive impact: A combined interest in environmental impact is key for someone who is socially conscious like Justine, as they are not motivated simply with the interest of reducing costs but also to feel impactful about their choices.
Do more tasks, in less time: Efficiency is critical especially when it comes to smart appliances, as a key goal of these tools is to bring more convenience for the user.