Casa
Introducing Casa—gamifying sustainable living with shared goals, rewards, and real-world impact.
This innovative home interface doesn’t just provide clear breakdowns of utility consumption to help users make smarter, greener choices—it makes the process enjoyable.
Casa transforms mundane utility management into engaging, interactive challenges. Households can set shared goals, earn rewards, customise avatars, and collectively witness their impact on finances and the environment.
When not in use, screensavers allow Casa to blend in as an art piece of your choice.
With Casa, sustainability is not only simple and efficient but also enjoyable.
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✓ Led team of four
✓ Co-ordinated project management and strategy ideation
✓ Performed primary research
✓ Analysed and synthesised data into meaningful and actionable insights
✓ Identified target problem
✓ Created low to high fidelity prototypes and wireframes
✓ Conducted usability testing, heuristic evaluation, and system usability surveys for refinement
✓ Presented updates and final value proposition in an industry exhibition
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✓ The design concept must be presented on an interface and include a physical element
✓ The final concept cannot consist of an app alone
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✓ Figma
✓ Adobe Creative Suite
✓ Miro (thematic analysis & synthesis)
✓ Canva
✓ Typeform
✓ Google Forms
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✓ User research
✓ Iterative design
✓ Presentation
✓ Prototyping
✓ User-centred design
✓ Information architecture
✓ Interaction design
✓ Thematic analysis
✓ Wire-framing
✓ Visual design
✓ Accessibility design
✓ Data analysis
✓ Collaboration and teamwork
✓ Customer journey mapping
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✓ 6 months
Research
Aim
To investigate current utility consumption management practices in Australia and develop innovative solutions that enhance user experience, driving broader adoption.
Question
How do Australians currently manage their utility consumption, and how can we innovate to make these solutions more impactful?
Objectives
To inform our research question, we focused on four main objectives:
Understand how users access and manage their utility consumption in Australia.
Investigate current practices and tools used for utility management.
Assess user interaction with and comprehension of utility data.
Examine motivations behind efforts to manage utility consumption.
Method
Questionnaires
I created and distributed a 12-question survey with 40 respondents, using Typeform for its intuitive design and advanced features to maintain respondent engagement. To ensure relevance, an initial screening question was included which confirmed that the respondent paid for their own utilities. The survey was distributed via QR codes, social media, and personal networks to reach a diverse audience. I utilised clear, neutral questions with precise 5-point Likert scale labels and used logical skip patterns to enhance the survey’s relevance and flow. This approach enabled us to gather actionable insights that formed a solid foundation for our prototypes.
Semi-Structured Interviews
I led semi-structured follow-up interviews with 6 participants to delve deeper into user experiences and provide clarity following their questionnaire responses. This method allowed us to validate quantitative data and uncover nuanced user motivations and pain points that our surveys alone may have missed. By combining these interviews with the questionnaire data, we gained a comprehensive understanding of user needs—this led to more informed and user-centered design decisions.
Online Ethnography
We conducted ethnographic research across Reddit, Facebook groups, Google, and product reviews to capture authentic user opinions and behaviours. This approach highlighted specific user challenges and trends, providing diverse and real-world insights. The findings helped ensure that our solutions were relevant, impactful, and grounded in honest user experiences.
Market and Competitor Analysis
We analysed offerings and customer reviews from Australia’s leading energy providers—AGL, Powershop, and Origin. Our research identified gaps and inconsistencies in their services, such as real-time support, comprehensive utility management, detailed usage reports, community engagement, linkage to energy savings, waste management, pre-purchasing power, push notifications, and solar tracking. We aimed to integrate these missing features into our final design, despite the challenge of consolidating data from multiple providers while maintaining an intuitive interface.
Key Findings
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Outdated systems for shared households complicate utility management, highlighting the need for simplified billing that automatically allocates costs based on individual usage.
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Managing utility bills across separate platforms disrupts holistic tracking, making it difficult for users to monitor overall consumption.
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Current tools lack clarity and actionable steps. Enhancing metrics translation into dollar values and incorporating financial incentives—like gamification and rankings—can improve user engagement and accountability.
User Needs, Simplified
These insights were distilled into seven key needs that guided our design decisions:
1. Clear access to household utility bills
2. Usage differentiation among household members
3. Alerts to help manage and reduce over-usage.
4. Predictive usage/price tools
5. Idle appliance tracking to minimise waste
6. Frequent usage summaries
7. Innovative incentives for behavioural change
Revised Problem Statement
Australia’s inadequate utility management tools hinder households from effectively managing consumption and adopting sustainable living practices.
Personas
To ensure our design solutions aligned with our user needs and motivations, we developed three distinct personas which served as fictional yet representative characters—each embodying specific user groups based on our research findings.
By crafting detailed profiles, we could empathise more effectively with our target users. This approach allowed us to tailor our features and user experience to address the unique goals, challenges, and behaviours of each persona—ensuring our solutions were equally relevant and as they were impactful.
Papa Peter, 55
Background
Works full-time and lives with his two teenage children. He’s the primary breadwinner and is conscious about household expenses but struggles to engage his kids in managing utility usage.
Tech-literacy
Basic—comfortable with everyday technology but finds complex digital interfaces overwhelming.
Goal
Encourage his children to be less wasteful with utility consumption and save money on bills. He wants a simple, straight-forward tool that can engage both him and his kids in managing their energy use.
Student Stella, 23
Background
A highly driven full-time student in her final year of University who also works part-time. She shares an apartment with two housemates. She’s tech-savvy and is always on the lookout for ways to cut costs.
Tech-literacy
Advanced—very comfortable with technology and prefers apps that offer detailed insights and control.
Goal
Reduce utility consumption to save money, especially on a tight student and part-time worker budgets. She seeks a tool that offers granular control and insights into energy use, ideally with features that promote collaboration among housemates.
Lousy Louie, 30
Background
Works part-time and lives alone in a small studio apartment. Though he can be lazy at times, he's motivated to make changes to his lifestyle to save money.
Tech-literacy
Proficient—familiar with using technology but prefers interfaces that are intuitive and require minimal effort to navigate.
Goal
Reduce utility bills to save for a car. He’s looking for an easy-to-use tool that helps him track and reduce his energy consumption without a steep learning curve.
Ideation
To begin our ideation process, we conducted a "crazy eights" session to brainstorm innovative solutions tailored to the needs of our three personas. After identifying recurring themes in our ideas, we developed three distinct concepts, each integrating the strongest features from our brainstorming.
Concept 1
UtiliTrack consolidates detailed summaries of electricity, water, and gas usage, offering users a holistic view of their utility consumption, enabling more efficient tracking and management across all utilities.
Concept 2
FlowFridge serves as a central hub for shared households which simulates the home environment by tracking each member's utility usage, setting team challenges, and establishing collective goals. The concept aims to foster cooperation through a gamified experience, including personalised avatars and challenges designed to encourage users to improve their utility usage over time.
Concept 3
RoomWise tracks the utility usage of individuals by installing smart panels on the doors of each housemates room. These panels measure the room's utility output, and notifies members as they approach their usage goals. It also offers visitor summaries, which provides insights into how utility consumption fluctuates with guests.
Prototype, Iterate, Repeat
Iteration 1: Paper Prototype
After developing three initial concepts, we used a decision matrix to objectively evaluate how well each prototype addressed the seven key user needs. As “concept 2” scored the highest, we integrated its strongest features into a refined version named "Casa"—meaning "home" in Spanish.
Casa merges data tracking with gamification to enhance utility management as our research showed that financial motivation was a key driver for users, and traditional data alone wasn’t sufficient enough for encouraging meaningful change.
As such, our goal was to both inform users while actively motivating them to adopt more sustainable practices by implementing an interactive and engaging interface.
Before moving to digital designs, we sketched basic wireframes to establish the layout, features, information architecture, hierarchy, navigation, and overall aesthetic.
Iteration 2: Mid-Fidelity Prototype
Using Figma, we developed a mid-fidelity prototype of Casa, focusing on the seven key needs which informed our main features including:
Incentives
Users earn a live “Utility Score” based on their current usage compared to similar households, with a leaderboard for comparing their performance at the suburb, state, and national levels.
Utility Breakdown
A comprehensive overview of utility usage and spending starts at a high level on the dashboard. Users can delve deeper into nested pages to view detailed usage by individual appliances, compare historical and predicted consumption, and analyze room-specific usage to make informed lifestyle changes.
Payment System
This feature allows users to pay utility bills within the app. It offers flexibility by enabling payments to be made in full or split among individuals, providing a more integrated approach to utility management.
Usability Testing
Using our mid-fidelity prototype, we conducted comprehensive usability testing to evaluate Casa’s main features. Participants engaged in think-aloud protocols to provide real-time feedback and identify pain points or obstacles. We followed this with semi-structured interviews, heuristic evaluations, and a system usability survey to gather both qualitative and quantitative data for a well-rounded analysis.
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Although the “usage health” leaderboard allowed users to compare their performance with others in their area, city, or country, it fell short in motivating engagement sparking behavioural changes.
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The dense information and complex navigation disrupted the user experience, making it challenging to use the app intuitively.
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Users were concerned about the security of the internal payment feature, fearing unauthorised transactions, and found it redundant since they preferred to manage payments directly through their provider.
Final Concept
In response to user feedback, we enhanced Casa by boosting our gamification elements—introducing avatar customisation, an in-app store for purchasing accessories, and lock-screen artwork for standby mode (similar to a screensaver). We also introduced an ongoing reward system to increase user engagement and motivation.
To improve navigation and clarity, we simplified Casa’s structure by reducing nested pages and adopting a horizontal layout. We also removed the internal payment feature to address privacy concerns and eliminate redundancy.
The refined Casa now focuses on delivering interactive and rewarding experiences that naturally incentivise users without unnecessary functionalities.
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Reflection
I’m incredibly proud of what our team achieved and learned in such a short period. Casa challenged me to develop a meaningful solution for a widespread issue that I personally relate to. It also ignited my passion for designing innovative interfaces and promoting conscious consumption for a better future.
The overwhelming industry and academic interest during my product showcase, combined with a High Distinction mark and positive tutor feedback, affirmed the significance of Casa’s mission and fuelled my commitment to its ongoing development.
Through this project, I experienced firsthand what my tutors meant by "Design doesn't end; it's a constant iterative process." The cycles of prototyping, testing, and refining highlighted the importance of adaptability and continuous improvement in design.
Looking ahead, I plan to further develop Casa by conducting in-depth user testing in real household settings and with a broader user demographic. To support this, I can leverage partnerships with utility companies, which would provide valuable insights and potential funding.
Additionally, I aim to explore how Casa can be adapted for users outside of shared households to ensure its relevance and impact for a wider audience.