Resident Energy Management
EZEnergy Resident App
Turning an opaque utility bill into a habit-forming consumer experience — for a category most residents actively avoid.
At a glance
Context
Most customers face confusion around utility billing and energy costs. Existing systems provide minimal transparency into consumption patterns, leading to surprise bills, frequent support calls, and low satisfaction.
Energy companies needed a way to reduce operational overhead while empowering residents to actually understand and manage their usage. The challenge: make complex utility data accessible and actionable in a mobile-first experience that aligns with property-management workflows and consumer expectations.
Constraints
- 01
One-week concept sprint — the scope had to be ruthless about what shipped as flow-level detail versus concept-level artifact.
- 02
Category aversion — most residents avoid thinking about their utility bill; the product had to earn attention, not demand it.
- 03
Data complexity — kilowatt-hours, time-of-use pricing, and rate structures had to become legible to non-experts without dumbing down the underlying reality.
- 04
First-of-its-kind — no direct competitors to benchmark against; validation came from adjacent product categories (audit tools, time-of-use apps, outage maps).
Approach
Product vision and experience strategy
Defined the end-to-end product concept — usage tracking, billing, outage support, and AI energy optimization — moving the experience from passive account management to proactive household guidance.
AI-guided home diagnostic
Shaped a guided audit experience that uses camera access and structured walkthroughs to help residents identify appliances, lighting, and behaviors driving usage. Validated against existing home-energy audit tools that already use guided capture to produce recommendations.
Time-of-use and behavior design
Designed a reminder system that translates utility rate complexity into simple, timely prompts — when to run laundry, dishwashers, and high-consumption appliances. The behavioral primitive most consumer energy products under-invest in.
Service and outage workflows
Integrated outage reporting, issue intake, and map visibility into the core app so customers can quickly understand what is happening and what to do next — using the mental model outage apps have already trained users on.
Artifacts
Outcome
Month-to-date electricity usage with projected bill visibility and clearer cost awareness — the primitive most utility apps don't ship.
In-app billing and payment flows with surface area for relevant programs, upgrades, and service upsells.
AI-assisted home walkthrough that identifies likely power-intensive appliances and returns tailored recommendations. Usage-window reminders guide residents to lower-cost times of day for common tasks.
Fast outage and issue reporting paired with a live map and restoration context.
Being the first of its kind, outcomes are directional — the win here is a scalable foundation for future energy-management and sustainability features, not a confidential KPI.
What I'd do differently
A one-week sprint forces good tradeoffs but hides a real one: which of these four surfaces is the actual wedge? On a longer engagement I'd sequence the launch — lead with month-to-date usage + projected bill, then earn the right to prompt behavior. Shipping all four at once risks each doing the work of a demo instead of a habit.
§ End of case 04