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/Client Story

Mercury Cosy

Ensuring warmer homes for New Zealanders.

A digital tool to provide warmer, drier homes for kiwis.

  1. 01Conducted in-depth user research and testing
  2. 02Designed an end-to-end digital-first experience
  3. 03Developed a bespoke web app to assess home energy efficiency

The Challenge

In New Zealand, inadequate home insulation causes the deaths of nearly 1,600 people every year, with hundreds of thousands more suffering negative health effects. Households struggle to find recommendations or guidance online for cost effective, long-term solutions that will help them make their home healthier and more comfortable to live in.

Mercury, a leading national power company, wanted to provide their customers with a digital tool that would help them find the right cost-effective, long term solutions to make their home healthier and more comfortable. They partnered with us to help them produce a digital-first experience that could help kiwis understand the health of their home, get advice on how to improve it, and fulfill that need with Mercury-backed solutions.

The Solution

The initial product concept involved a fully-digital experience, without the perceived hassle of an in-person assessment.  Taking a human-centred design approach, we ran through a number of workshops as a cross-functional team to outline the key pain points of the current experience, putting the user first.

As we dove into the discovery phase and began conducting user interviews, it became clear that most users actually wanted the in-person assessment. A common sentiment expressed by users was that they wouldn’t be comfortable making major decisions about their home without having someone physically visit the home to make an assessment. 

Consequently, the product concept involved to incorporate a home visit, although the experience remained mainly digital. Mercury partnered with Greenside (formerly Greenstar), an energy solutions provider specialising in home insulation, to provide in-person assessment and installation services. 

The tool aims to take care of the end-to-end experience by also connecting the customer with our partner GreenSide Energy Solutions, so that they can book a consultation online to get expert in-person guidance, before having quality energy solutions delivered and installed.

Since affordability is a key issue for a lot of families, we've collaborated with EECA to offer their Warmer Kiwi Homes subsidy through Mercury Cosy. Households can receive a 90% subsidy on their insulation and heat pumps, and the Mercury Cosy tool lets users know if they are eligible for it — making a healthy and comfortable home an achievable goal for more kiwi families.

The Result

The Mercury Cosy tool is simple, intuitive, and designed with warmth and brightness in mind. It helps customers find, prioritise, implement and install the right solutions for their home. The tool presents available solutions, makes recommendations based on the user’s specific situation and needs, provides the estimated cost of these solutions, and lets the user know which products they should install and prioritise first.

/Next Client Story

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