
Discovery Workshops
Kick-start innovation with design thinking. Map out how your customers experience your product or service. Then use simple exercises to structure your creativity.
Discover what people really value with bespoke research
Build appealing propositions with our experienced players
Discover how consumers use your product or service
Harness innovation to reduce vulnerability to fuel poverty and design smarter consumer protection
UX/UI excellence from a team of proven heavyweights
See beyond what people say to understand what they do in smart homes around the UK

Kick-start innovation with design thinking. Map out how your customers experience your product or service. Then use simple exercises to structure your creativity.

We hear more and more about electric vehicles every day. We see charging points for them at supermarkets and motorway services. But how do people really feel about EVs?

Government is investing £100m in smart local energy system innovation projects from 2019-22. The aim is to create high value jobs providing cleaner, cheaper renewable energy.

Find out how people use your product or service so you can improve it. Use simple things, like diaries, to record their everyday experiences using your product.

When it comes to heating, people care more about their experience than how it’s delivered. They want to control how much they spend on their comfort, but don’t know how. If they could buy their Heating as a Service, then they choose how much to spend on their plan.

60,000 electric vehicles were bought in UK last year. We interviewed electric car drivers to see what they thought about letting energy suppliers control their charging.

We gathered the best in the industry to run a 1-day bootcamp-style hackathon where this super-team developed a free open-source tool to score and publicly test solutions to UK fuel poverty.

We use 80% of our energy at home for heating and hot water. This produces 20% of our carbon emissions. We need to give people the heat they want without the carbon. So, back in 2013, we built a team of leading academics and consultants to understand how people use heat at home.

Want to understand how different EV users charge their vehicles?
We have created five personas based on want consumers want from electric vehicle charging and demand-side response.

We conducted a bespoke four-day design sprint with Big Clean Switch to help them design, build and test a digital platform that allows energy customers to make informed choices about their home energy improvements.

We collaborated with Ofgem to think about the future of energy and what policy change could look like.

Decarbonisation of the energy system will change the way that consumers use and buy energy. If you want to ensure that your innovation is inclusive for all it is essential that you understand consumer risks. We created a manual with structured tasks to help you identify your risks and consider how you might address them.
Millions of households live with illnesses made worse by the cold. What if you could prescribe a warm home to them? We thought we’d try this out by prototyping a smart energy service for households suffering from a cold-related chronic illness.

If we want consumers to take up new energy services they must first understand them. We looked into deciphering the language around Demand Side Response (DSR) with our Home Truths® panel.

There’s growing interest in the idea that businesses could sell energy as a service. Confident we could sell Heat as a Service, we wanted to explore how to add Hot Water. We used a Design Sprint to see how far we could get in three days.
We succeed when you succeed: leverage our unique position
We are helping shape the policy landscape for the next 25 years
Matchmakers for government and entrepreneurs
Use Catapult modelling tools to validate propositions across the wider energy system
We collaborate with innovators to deliver projects that move towards decarbonisation goals
The Energy Systems Catapult is a not-for-profit set up by government to help the energy sector innovate. PeopleLab is home to our Consumer Insight team.
Find out more about the rest of the Catapult here then get us involved.
Invite us to your Hackathons and Design Sprints…
…it’s free!
Come and see us for a friendly
chat over a cuppa.
Cannon House, 18 The Priory Queensway
Birmingham B4 6BS8
We love small print. Said nobody, ever.