Increasing investor-readiness
Design support for Intelligent Sustainable Energy from Design Council on Vimeo.
The technology
In 2007, Dr. Malcolm McCulloch invented a process for measuring electricity usage that he hoped to develop into a smart electric meter that would enable users to view and control individual energy use of each appliance in their home. With access to better data he believed customers could use up to 20% less energy.
His vision was to set up a company to take the invention to market but the team faced a series of challenges. They lacked knowledge of how to develop a mass-market product, and crucially, they needed to raise seed investment to form the company and fund the next stage of development.
The team responsible thought design input provided would focus on preparing a brief for prototyping the meter. Instead, the Design Associate, David Maddison convinced the team that they needed to research key issues such as how the meter would be manufactured and installed and how it would present data to users.
On his recommendation the team then commissioned visualisations showing the meter in different user scenarios to ensure would-be investors understood the concept and the investment opportunity. As well as showing the team how to use these visualisations to engage with investors and get them excited about a product that didn’t yet exist, the Design Associate recommended that the visualisations could be used to help with market research with potential users and to galvanise the team around a shared vision.
This turned out to be a critical part of our investment process, explains McCulloch. ‘Once we had the visuals, investors were able to see the product could be a reality’
The result
The design work was instrumental in the team securing £900,000 of seed funding to set up a spin-out company. ‘We thought we would get support developing a prototype,’ says David Baghurst, Head of Isis Enterprise, ‘but we got something much more valuable – a lot of customer and investor interest for a very small amount of money.’
Two years on, the original spin-out is now known as Navetas and second round funding of £4,000,000 has enabled the company to further develop the product and run national trials with a major UK energy company. The company currently employs 20 people and has plans for growth once the trials have been completed.
It would have been very difficult to have done it without the Design Council,’ says McCulloch. ‘We could have got there, but we probably would have lost about a year’s process along the way.’
Find out more about the energy meter on the Navetas website
Maddison Design
Product designer David Maddison mentored the Geni-e meter team and helped them decide for themselves how working with a designer could best add value to their ideas and to their business's future potential.
Find out more about Maddison Design at www.maddison.co.uk