Windstax is a full-service developer of integrated alternative energy solutions, pioneering in large vertical wind turbines and microgrids that are changing industry’s perspective of energy as a commodity to energy as an opportunity. All of the company's value that they provide to customers lie in the physical product. As a result, the company is unable to build continuing relationships with customers for sustained business opportunities.
Stored wind energy that is unused by customers can be collected by Windstax to be traded and sold on Wholesale Energy Markets. A portion of the profits made from selling this energy will be returned back to the customer, incentivizing them to reduce energy usage.
Leveraging customer data collected from their installed microgrids, Windstax can provide customers with monthly, actionable suggestions to use less and save more. Customers can interact with their own data in order to set energy usage goals to further facilitate environmentally conscious habits
Windstax Energy is a full-service developer of integrated alternative energy solutions.The company is in charge of the full process of designing, engineering, and manufacturing vertical wind turbines in order to optimize energy through distribution and sharing.
A stakeholder diagram was created in order to map out Windstax Energy's current ecosystem. The goal was to determine opportunities in which an additional service could help to expedite, facilitate, or enhance processes for one (or more) Windstax stakeholders.
Creation of the stakeholder map revealed that Windstax serves as a focal point for interaction in order for many processes to occur. As a result, this creates a bottleneck in which resources, specifically time, cannot be allocated to providing additional customer value and services.
"Unlike other wind turbines, vertical and horizontal axis alike, which are based on lift, the WindStax system uses a rotor design based on drag and is the first wind turbine with this unique design to be installed on an urban rooftop."
WindStax Energy's advantage over competitors lies in the largely scalable wind turbines themselves. Given this unique value proposition, I began to consider service opportunities beyond the production, installation, and maintenance of the turbines.
The wind turbines are the vehicles that transport and transfer the main commodity: energy. Instead of looking deeper into the specific inner workings of the company, I took a step back to evaluate how the company fits into the larger energy distribution system.
WindStax Energy's advantage over competitors lies in the largely scalable wind turbines themselves. Given this unique value proposition, I began to consider service opportunities beyond the production, installation, and maintenance of the turbines.
Based on background research, and diagramming of stakeholder interactions and energy distributions cycles, our team defined the following insights:
Generated wind energy is treated as an exhaustible resource as opposed to a recyclable commodity
The company is positioned at the center of many processes, limiting the resources to engage more with customers
There is an opportunity for Windstax to harness the unused energy generated from customers to be sold on Wholesale Energy Markets. Through the means of a mobile service app, customers can keep track of energy usage and determine how to dispense of leftover wind energy. On the company side, the service app will allow Windstax to trade and sell leftover customer energy back to the Wholesale Market.
By providing customers with energy usage visualization, and allowing them to interact with data to set goals, we imagine that customers will be incentivized to reduce their energy consumption. Using less energy would allow the customer to return any unused energy back to Windstax in exchange for user credit or money.
Customer usage data can also be used to inform the company's research and development initiatives. In doing so, some of the responsibility that Windstax Energy must take on within the R&D sector can be reduced, mitigating the bottleneck.
After deciding the direction we wanted to take, we quickly sketched several concepts for the interface, focusing specifically on various ways to visualize data.
For our low fidelity prototypes, we made quick mockups based on the sketches we had decided upon. At this stage, the designs were made in gray-scale to focus attention on the service solution as opposed to the visual design.
User feedback for the low-fidelity screens indicated that stagnant data displays were not convincing enough to get people to want to reduce their energy usage. In order to do so, the second round of design iterations focused on exploring ways to make data more interactive, and more engaging.
For our low fidelity prototypes, we made quick mockups based on the sketches we had decided upon. At this stage, the designs were made in gray-scale to focus attention on the service solution as opposed to the visual design.
Customers can toggle between varying spans of time in order to compare and keep track of energy usage trends. The dotted line on the graph indicates the average energy usage, and isolates the instance of the most energy usage, and the instance of the least energy usage (in kW).
By selecting a category, customers gain insight into how much energy that specific category consumes. While there are other utilities that consume energy in a typical household, only the top four energy consuming utilities were isolated to demonstrate the breakdown.
Translating abstract energy units of kW to tangible amounts of usage, such as dishwasher cycles, and showers, makes behavior change suggestions more realizable and actionable. By moving the slider, users can understand exactly how their actions affect their energy usage / savings.
Using less energy would allow the customer to return any unused energy back to Windstax in exchange for user credit or money. The ability to save money would incentivize users to reduce their energy consumption.
