Extending product appeal with connected, engaging, and personalized user experiences.

Beginning with deeper insights into what motivates people to seek renewable home energy, Sunrun reimagined an entire customer experience based on human-centered digital products. The world's first, fully integrated, renewable home energy solution actually enables a better lifestyle and encourages people to use more sustainable energy.

Client overview:

Founded in 2007 by Lynn Jurich and Ed Fenster, Sunrun Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Powering over 500,000 homes worldwide, Sunrun Inc. is the largest and fastest-growing renewable home energy company globally. Sunrun offers homeowners a better lifestyle with clean and connected home energy as we move toward a more electrified and sustainable future. By connecting rooftop solar panels with battery storage, electric transportation (+charging), and smart home automation, homeowners can produce and consume everything they need from the comfort of their own homes. Integrated software applications put power in the hands of homeowners, allowing them to control how they produce, save, and consume electricity.

Business rationale:

Despite having over half a million customers worldwide, Sunrun's mobile app only has about 30,000 downloads between Google Play and the App Store combined. Mobile experiences and transparent data have become the norm for customers, from banking to fitness to music. People want data at their fingertips. Users want to know how much energy they're producing, how much they're spending on electricity, and how that power is they're using to create the better lifestyle they desire.

Primary business objective: Encourage homeowners to live their best lives with powerful insights into their energy performance and the ability to control how they produce, store, and consume electricity.

Solution vision: Bringing our users to life

Understanding user needs based on the Job to be Done framework.

Our mindset on the way we approach problem-solving is crucial. If we agree that the most critical focus of any human-centered product is understanding the end user's needs (i.e., the human), then we need the capacity for empathy. It can be the difference between solving a problem and building a product that we think solves the problem because it looks and feels so brilliant on the surface. The former means innovating solutions (which are more likely to have value and result in a sustainable business), and the latter means innovating ideas (which don't necessarily have any value). The Job to be Done framework masters the art of understanding users and building empathy because it approaches the problem entirely from their perspective. As a classic example of JTBD thinking in action, we can think of how consumers perceive the value of a drill bit. No one purchases a 1/4" drill bit because they need a drill bit. People only buy a 1/4" drill bit because they need a 1/4" hole.

The job to be done: Maximize comfort while using energy responsibly

At the end of a comprehensive Jobs to be Done study, we concluded that the job to be Done for our customers was to maximize comfort while using energy responsibly. Until this point, homeowners felt constraints on their lifestyle based on the fear they could be using too much power, which would lead to spending too much money or harming the environment. What this meant, in effect, was that our customer's true intent behind choosing (and using) renewable home energy products was to enable their best lifestyle without paying too much or harming the environment.

Understanding user needs based on JTBD segments.

• Metric hungry homeowners: These homeowners struggle to live their best lives because they lack confidence in their renewable home energy products and that their previous investments have been worthwhile. Homeowners in this segment said they had a hard time predicting, realizing, and understanding the ROI of their chosen solutions in terms of money spent/saved and environmental impact.

• Early adopters: These homeowners said they had the fewest unmet needs, meaning they were the most satisfied users in the short term. These users tended to be younger and more likely to have purchased their renewable home energy products. They stand in contrast to the first group as they are typically willing to experiment with new technology before feeling like they entirely understand their ROI.

• Cost-sensitive: These homeowners felt their need for cost reduction prevailed over every other need. They were unlikely to invest in any technology (hardware or software) that wouldn't have a guaranteed positive impact on their bottom line.

User experience (UX) design: Crafting the right experience based on user needs

User problem: 44% of homeowners say they struggle disproportionately to maximize their comfort level in their homes while using energy responsibly.

• They don't have a good understanding of the economic or environmental impact of their energy usage.

• They struggle with analysis paralysis when deciding what products to use and purchase.

• They are constantly looking for ways to spend less money and use less energy.

Personalized solution approach (no one-size-fits-all solutions): Remove guilt and uncertainty by crafting compelling, scalable, and customized solutions for every homeowner

• Personalized design features and content delivery based on the personal hardware configuration (varies by household), private financing (varies by contract holder), weather (varies by location), and other user preferences (varies by device user)

• System data and battery performance are gathered remotely from integrated system hardware.

• Day / Night helps users understand when they are producing affordable energy from their panels vs. using energy from the grid, how much backup power they have stored in their battery, and how to adjust their energy usage across their home.

• Light mode or dark mode themes are applied based on user preference across the web and mobile apps.

• Improved accessibility and compatibility across devices and platforms using modular React Native micro applications and integrated system software

Feature composition overview

UX blueprints

Putting it all together

The power to live your best life. In your hands.

The world's first, fully integrated, renewable home energy system. Now available for every homeowner.

Clean, renewable energy powering all your devices. Now accessible from all your devices.

Seamlessly integrated data. For your eyes, not ours.

Personalized tools to help you make responsible financial and environmental decisions.

Paperless billing: The first solution ever that actually encourages you to use more energy.

Most utility companies charge homeowners for energy based on how much they use on a per kWh rate. With a fully integrated system from Sunrun, homeowners can qualify for fixed-rate billing with a performance guarantee for up to 25 years. That means homeowners can use all the clean, renewable energy they want, and they'll never be charged extra.

Personalized reports: Real-time data and system information are available anytime. Day or night.

Earn unlimited rewards when you share MySunrun with your family and friends.

MySunrun: Created by Sunrun, powered by you.

Results summary

• Adoption increased by ~3% to over 30% in just 3 months. Daily active users skyrocketed from 14.7% to nearly 40% over the same timeframe.

• Customer rNPS score improved more than 40 points with daily active users compared to customers that did not download the mobile or access the web app.

• MySunrun app reviews improved from > 2-star ratings to 3+ stars in under 3 months.

• Customer-driven lead generation increased more than 10x over a 30-day trial period with in-app referral rewards features.

• Development and deployment timelines were reduced by 6 weeks per feature add post-micro-app development.

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