Context

Enerio is a mobile application designed to assist students and individuals who live in shared flats in optimizing energy consumption during the moving-out or relocating process.

Encourages a collaborative approach to managing energy usage, helping flatmates devide costs equally and simplify the responsibilities of shared living.

Problem

In shared living spaces, particularly among students and individuals in shared flats, there is a pervasive lack of streamlined communication and coordination regarding energy consumption and responsibilities during the moving-out process. This leads to an overall inefficient and stressful relocation experience.

The lack of a central platform makes it harder to fairly split costs, manage contracts, and raise awareness on energy usage.

How can we help residents in shared living spaces track energy use, pay individually, and simplify the moving-out process?

Goal

The goal is to simplify the process of splitting bills, ensuring that each flatmate pays only their part. This transparency fosters a sense of fairness and accountability, reducing the friction often associated with shared living expenses. With the added benefit of contract flexibility during relocation, residents can easily transfer or adjust their energy usage without hassle, making the moving process smoother for everyone.

Empower students and residents in shared flats to seamlessly manage and reduce energy consumption individually but also making relocation easier.

Key needs

Challenges in fairly dividing energy costs among residents.

Difficulties during the moving-in and moving-out process.

Challanges in choosing a suitable energy provider.

Difficulties for the individuals to track usage and expenses.

Insights

●
Residents prefer being assigned in contracts with energy providers and manage their energy payments independently.
●
The moving-out process can be a significant source of stress.
●
There is a general lack of awareness about individual energy consumption and its environmental impact.
●
Residents often experience changes in living arrangements based on academic or personal needs.

User research

After conducting 10 interviews with both students and young professionals several key themes and insights emerged regarding energy usage and the moving-out process. Based on the key insights gathered, I revisited the initial prototype to address the specific pain points uncovered in the interviews.

Personas

Ideation

After gathering insights from user interviews, I began brainstorming solutions to address key challenges that users face. I focused on creating features that would simplify the overall experience while ensuring flexibility for different living arrangements. After brainstorming, I evaluated various options and moved forward by creating low-fidelity wireframes to visualize the best ideas.

Wireframes

User Flow

Takeaways

This UX challenge taught me the importance of staying flexible as a designer, especially when balancing user needs with real-world constraints. It reminded me that sometimes the best solutions come from iterative thinking and being open to change throughout the design process. If I had more time, I would dive deeper into user testing to fine-tune the design even further and explore additional ways to improve the overall experience.