The Indispensability of User Friendly Software in Energy Retrofitting

My company transforms buildings from energy leaking to energy efficient buildings. This involves doing energy audits, selecting the right measures for the building, retrofitting the building and monitoring the results.

Retrofitting buildings is essential for a clean future. However, the retrofitting process may be the least digitized activity in the current energy and construction sector. Here, big data and dynamic analyses have not landed yet. Which is a pity, because I believe that the right use of software and user interface can immensely increase the demand for energy retrofits. Here’s why:

1. The customer no longer accepts a random analysis by the next-door guy that happens to be handy. That uncle that would say: ‘invest in this fund, it will double your money’. Would you follow his directions without checking? No. You’d double check the fund online, get a second opinion, read reviews. The same goes for making your building energy efficient. We all have this smart relative or neighbour that says: ‘You should buy solar panels!’ or ‘let company X insulate your walls. It worked for me, it will work for you too!’ This is all very nice, and in no way do I want people to stop encouraging each other to retrofit their buildings, but: the actions that will truly work for you are not determined by your neighbours success with his actions. They are determined by data. An accurate scan of your building, combined with energy consumption data, will determine what actions are truly cost-effective for you. Plus: having a transparent customer journey in the retrofitting process, will only make your customers love you more.
2. Great UI lowers barriers for change. Paperwork not only disencourages people, it excludes them. Things in live that are considered difficult by people, such as tax filing and insurances, have one thing in common: if you want to do it right, you have to do a lot of paperwork. And read the fine print, too. If we want to get people into retrofitting their buildings, we have to avoid smothering them with lengthy paperwork. Instead, let’s look at the industries that excell in user friendliness and take that as an example. Organizing a trip was once a tiresome ordeal: you had to put your autograph under a 5-page file with general conditions before you could take a flight. Now, you can order your ticket to Bali with your smartphone. Even though a flight is a big amount of cash, and, to some, even a degree of risk, it has been made dead easy for us to purchase. Flying is not restricted for the ones that have the intellect or the patience to read the fine print. It’s for everyone. Services that are presented to people in a way that is intuitive and follows the expected logic, are services that will be succesful.
3. We approach retrofits too much as single events. Software that is able to filter generated data en output clear-cut retrofit programmes can change that. Instead of putting all to work to retrofit house X, we can now focus on how to retrofit all houses like X. This is, in fact, a huge distinction. It means that, with the right software, energy efficiency retrofitting becomes scalable and replicable. And we know for a fact that scalability and replicability are cost decreasers.

We are working on programmes that allow all users to invest easily in building upgrades for energy efficiency. But we’re just a small player in the Netherlands. I encourage UX designers and energy services companies to reach out to each other so we can make energy efficient buildings mainstream and make this process accessible to everybody.