On May 25 RED hosted the Design Council's first design 'charette'. The aim of the day was to draw out some new service solutions and policy recommendations to reduce the energy demands of London's domestic sector - currently accounting for 44% of London's CO2 emissions. The focus was on able-to-pay owner occupier households which represent a major opportunity for energy efficiency retro-fits.

Read more about what we did, who was there, what they did, and how our policy audience responded at the briefing that followed.

Who was there

The charette was co-sponsored by the London Climate Change Agency, London Energy Partnership, and Design Council.

The charette team included key players in the UK domestic energy policy and programme arenas, London boroughs, programme delivery agents, and of course, designers:

London Climate Change Agency, London Development Agency, London Energy Partnership, PRASEG, Eaga Partnership Ltd., British Gas plc, Sustainable Energy Action (SEA) Transco - District Support Office, BRE, Energy Saving Trust, PowerGen plc, Utilita, Greater London Energy Efficiency Network (GLEEN), National Energy Assistance Directors Association, Warm Zone, EDF Energy, Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence, Retrotec Europe, Halifax Bank of Scotland, London Borough of Hounslow, Radarstation, Plot, Science Ecology Art (the SEA), Tekolondon Ltd, Creative Environmental Networks (CEN), London Borough of Islington, Archipelago.

We were also very lucky to have special guests join us from EnerGuide Canada, Canadian Natural Resources, Green Communities Canada, and Green$aver.

What we did

A charette is an intense effort to solve a problem in a limited period of time, involving three stages: a) listening to what people know and suggest; b) envisioning together new possibilities; and c) rapidly drawing up a tangible plan.

We kicked off with presentations from the UK Warm Zones programme and the Canadian EnerGuide for Houses Retrofit programme to set the scene of current best practices in energy efficiency retro-fit service provision. We showed a short film of the actual customer experience involved in these services and the audit or evaluation process that is undertaken.

We provided the teams with example services that are successful in other areas and asked them to think of what we might learn from the specific features of these services:
Photocopier leasing - use not ownership
Ann Summers - social occasion, party organisers
Easyjet - no frills, cheap, celebrity (Stelios)
Amazon - recommendation systems
Fed Ex - integrated logistics, real time tracking
MOT - approved, log book, warn of upcoming problems
Apple store - auditorium, genius bar, hands on, one of the club
TenUK - federation model, US company sign up, one point of contact
Lego mindstorms - physical, online developer community, programmable, modular
AQA - distributed network of researchers, any question any time, text messaging

We then looked at the path to participation for existing services. We asked the teams to explore the perceived 'barriers' and 'drivers' based on different hypothetical users. To really get to the heart of the user experience we asked the teams to complete a partial user profile - asking what in each case their priorities might be, what motivates them, what turns them off and what their aspirations might be? We wanted to draw out what it is that gets people to seek to participate in existing programmes and why they don't always follow through. What moves them forward and what moves them back in that path to participation? Are there any gaps in the existing services and what might the potential advantages be along the way?

Based on all this we asked the teams to design a new service. We wanted to know who the stakeholders are, how the service would be organised and funded, what new components would be necessary and what policy changes would be needed to drive this forward?

We asked for a storyboard of the path to participation for each service and a pitch. Finally we asked the teams to think about what policy changes and funding initiatives would be needed to make all this possible.

What they did

On each team we had a mix of top sector expertise, practical experience and designers. The response to our call for new ideas for reducing the domestic energy demand was prolific. Each team populated their story boards with a wealth of information which will be invaluable in informing our thinking in this area and for this we would like to thank all those involved. The policy recommendations that came out at the end of the day were assimilated into a policy briefing on Thursday 26 May at The Canadian High Commission. The response was overwhelmingly positive. More information on this will be available in the next few days so come back here if you'd like to hear the results.

What's next

The RED team are currently working with partners on how best to take this work forward in a project later in the summer. Again, more information on this will be available here when it takes shape so check in again.

CATEGORY: ENERGY PROJECT