Energy Saver Report (British Gas)
User experience and interaction design for of the Energy Saver Report service for British Gas.
2007
British Gas needed a way to help customers understand and improve their home energy efficiency — and to move them from passive awareness into active, trackable behaviour change.
I was brought in to design the UX and interaction for the Energy Saver Report: a service where customers take a 7-question survey and receive a personalised report of their home's energy efficiency, followed by a three-step Energy Planner to manage and improve their consumption over time.
Approach
The core challenge was turning a one-time survey into sustained behaviour change. A report alone wouldn't do it — customers needed something to come back to, act on, and track over time.
The direction was a three-step dashboard: current usage first, then a plan built from tailored recommendations, then a tracking view showing projected consumption if the pledged actions were followed. Each step was designed to be completable independently, so customers could return to any stage without restarting.
Customers could see projected savings before committing
The Build Your Plan step showed customers the exact financial and CO₂ savings of each recommended action — down to pounds per year and kilograms of CO₂ — before they pledged to anything. Switching to paperless billing, fitting energy saving bulbs, turning heating down one degree: each had a precise saving attached.
This gave customers a concrete basis for choosing which actions to take rather than accepting a generic list of suggestions.
Recommendations split into three tiers of effort
Rather than presenting all efficiency recommendations as a single undifferentiated list, the Build Your Plan step organised them into three categories: Quick Wins, The Little Things, and Something More. Each tier reflected a different level of effort and investment, letting customers self-select based on what they were ready to take on.
The tailored recommendations below those tiers were generated from the survey responses — specific to the customer's address and home type.
Completed actions earned leaves for schools
Customers who completed their plan earned leaves — the same currency used in the British Gas Generation Green schools programme. Those leaves could be donated to a school of the customer's choosing, connecting individual household behaviour to a wider community outcome.
This gave the Complete Your Plan step a social dimension beyond personal savings, tying the Energy Saver Report into British Gas's broader environmental programme.
Results
A fully designed and shipped energy efficiency service for British Gas customers — a 7-question survey generating a personalised home energy report, followed by a three-step Energy Planner covering current usage, tailored recommendations, and pledge tracking. Completed plans earned leaves donatable to any British Gas Generation Green school.
7-question survey · 3-step energy planner · tiered recommendations · leaves earned per completed plan