Alert Me
An Internet of Things application for more environmentally friendly and cost-effective energy consumption.
The Challenge
The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a global network of connected things. As the years pass, we are moving away from an internet populated by computers to an IoT consisting of billions of autonomous devices. These include mobile devices, machines, and people.
There will be as many as a trillion connected devices by 2025. As technology progresses, IoT will have a huge impact on urban everyday life. Concerned with improving services, reducing congestion and waste, these devices will help to make cities smarter.
Our open innovation partners, Alert Me and British Gas, wanted to create an app that would help to fully engage users of their home energy system. They wanted to deliver added value to Alert Me users, whilst tackling rising energy costs and addressing concerns regarding energy consumption.
Alert Me knew that we work as developers within the HyperCat consortium. So they approached our Ninjas for a solution - who listened directly to their concerns.
Listening
We knew this was a rapid, experimental prototype, designed to demonstrate the semantic power of HyperCAT. We worked closely with Alert Me to identify what would make their technology more meaningful and engaging for their home energy monitoring customers. Our biggest hurdle to face was communication, how to engage end-users, and how to interpret data effectively. Our findings led us to develop our strategy for the app.
We heard how users wanted to save money and reduce their environmental impact, but needed an easier way to interacting with their data and other users on the scheme.
It was time to think of a solution.
The Red Ninja approach is collaborative, by using co-creation we each suggested ideas and bounced off each other. We ended up with something that is much greater than the sum of its parts
Thinking
Our Ninjas recognised that in order to engage and motivate users, we needed to present their solution in a clear but fun way. This thought lead to a potential, creative solution.
We thought about developing an app that used gamification techniques. Our idea was that if we created a league table that showed users how they were using their energy, they could then make autonomous decisions to transform their environmental footprint. Data would then be transformed visually, allowing end-users to compare their performance with other nearby anonymised users. This concept would also engage the competitive side of their end-users, simultaneously prompting them to make more cost and environmentally effective decisions.
Plan in mind, we sprung into action.
Using a gamified IoT solution we can empower energy consumers to make more environmentally friendly and economical energy choices.
Red Ninja Studios developed a really interesting application - a leaderboard that helps homeowners to understand their energy consumption, whether it has gone up or down, and how much money they can save. It helped to gamify the problems of energy consumption.
Doing
Red Ninja are committed to designing creative solutions that have global applications. This led us to create a specific algorithmic strain for the project. Our thoughts: if we could create leaderboards that operated using smart methods, it would enable comparisons between houses and properties that were both fair and meaningful to Alert Me and end-users.
Putting our design-thinking approach into action, our Ninjas developed a user-friendly interface to ensure that users had the best experience possible whilst using our prototype. Tools were also set in place, and a group of 40 users were monitored over a two-month rapid iteration period.
This project helped partners to merge their data and deliver finished applications, bringing together everything we learned into Internet of Industrial Things (IoIT) programmes.
We are now working as a lead developer on IoT Demonstrator 2, HyperCat for All. This programme is helping British businesses including BAE, BT, Flexeye and 1248 to realise the benefits of IoT.