Improving the Experience
of Energy Efficiency

For more than a decade, our client – a software company transforming the way commercial building owners manage and improve the energy efficiency of their HVAC systems – has developed and patented innovative technology deployed by companies around the world.

Recently they sought to overhaul and upgrade the platform’s user interface, work that the company had previously outsourced to an external UX agency. But instead of bringing improvements, their new UI caused confusion among clients, increased the number of support calls, and created other problems that ultimately threatened the good standing of their product and brand. To help them make a swift turnaround, the company turned to Filter.

Filter’s lead UX consultant quickly identified that the root of these troubles lay in the arms-length, throw-work-over-the-wall relationship the previous UX firm had with the company and its product users. To move forward on the right track, Filter collaborated closely with client teams to discern in detail the key needs, priorities, and outcomes that would drive an effective UI design. But along the way, we also had to overcome another hurdle: the understandable wariness and distrust that had formed among client stakeholders after getting so badly burned by their previous agency.

Fortunately, the quality of our early work – and our hand-in-hand approach to address company-wide pain points – soon turned their reticence into respect and enthusiasm for the insights and ideas we delivered. We began with qualitative and quantitative user research and behavioral studies, facilitating reviews that gave us a solid baseline of requirements, use cases, user stories, and functional specifications to build from.

The client also agreed to provide an internal “brain trust” to whom we could go for quick and insightful feedback on design strategies, executions, and decision rationale. This group helped us not only validate our UX design strategies but also gain a first-hand understanding of the subtler user needs and business priorities that ultimately drive customer adoption and satisfaction.

This is only the first half of what is already an exciting client story for Filter. Our team has created UX design flows, patterns, prototypes, and other design artifacts for the client, and is now moving ahead from approved UI wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes.

Perhaps most significantly, our client has signaled their strong appreciation of Filter’s inside approach, our transparent processes, and our commitment to “do it right” in pursuit of an optimum solution. Because of our consultant’s thorough research-driven design, the client immediately realized saved time and resources, recognizing that these program updates could be implemented in other areas of the business for future business improvements. We’re happy to work with such an engaged and enthusiastic partner and hope to earn the opportunity to collaborate on a long-term, ongoing basis.