SCION

life cycle assessment wall calculator

Challenge: designindustry were approached to help a team of scientists to understand their product (a Life Cycle Assessment Wall Calculator) from the viewpoint of those who would ultimately be using it, and discover how it could be of most value to their customers.

SCION had developed a technology which could calculate the thermal performance and environmental impact of a wall over its useful life.  They had begun development of a web-based tool incorporating the technology and had identified many potential markets.

With a potentially exciting product at concept stage, the client lacked two critical elements to move forward:  A design brief and a user experience strategy.  Our goal; to define a brief for the development of the product based on real world requirements, ensuring both fitness for purpose and that the product interface would be intuitive to the end user.

Approach: designindustry took a user centred approach.  By understanding the end user of the product we are best placed to design to meet their needs.

We carried out qualitative customer research.  Interviews with a representative sample of people from various professions likely to benefit from using the tool.  We built a preliminary interactive prototype of the web interface to generate reactions from our sample.

Result:

Insights generated from customer research helped to shape the proposition into a product well aligned with a proven customer need:

• Demand for the product was validated and primary customer groups identified
• The role of the tool and context in which it would be used were validated
• Opportunities emerged to add value to existing functionality, increasing appeal and broadening the market for the product

designindustry then prototyped user interface solutions, visualising complex data in ways customers could easily digest and make use of.

SCION were able to move forward with confidence, working to a clear and proven brief with a benchmark set for the ideal user experience of the product.

“Thank you for these fascinating 2 days. It really opened my mind and made me better understand why I’m actually doing the work I’m doing... I suddenly realised how far on the consumer side I shifted”

Daniel Kellenberger, Environmental Scientist, SCION, Wellington