Empower
Overview: A sustainable energy hub that revolutionizes traditional outlets and extension cords.
Type: Household consumer product
My Role: Product + User Experience Design
Collaborators: Shane Tomaino, Samantha Wald, Evan Erhardt
Award: 2nd Place Venture in Brown University Entrepreneurial Process Class Pitch
Overview
I teamed up with a couple of students at Brown for an entrepreneurial project focused on sustainability energy usage in homes. We created a product to help users adjust to new work environments and reduce energy bills, while empowering them to take charge of their energy use and charging needs, alleviating burdens of invisible energy waste, inconvenient outlets, and dysfunctional cord clutter.
Our intention statement is we intend to ‘empower’ consumers to take charge of energy use and charging, putting them back in control of the things they care about in their most important spaces.
“This is a product I need and I think a lot of others do too. Messy extension cords in my workspace drive me nuts.” -Evan Dash, CEO of Storebound, discussing Empower
Watch The Empower Product Video Below
The Process
Market Research
Sustainable Market Research
Sustainable Technology Market Research
Extension and Power Cord Market Research
Competition Market Research
Surveys and Interviews
We conducted 200+ interviews with students and teacher using Google Forms, Phone Calls, and Email.
Prototype One: Minimum Viable Product
After creating our first prototype of Empower, we developed our product value propositions:
Ease of use without the threatening feel of overly “techy” products, the bulk of traditional extension cords, or the inaccessibility of wall chargers
These features flowed from direct consumer interviews that verified the pains of out of reach outlets and bulk cords
Easy alert system that nudges the consumer to cut power without requiring the advanced functionality required to do it
Interviews across our segments, but especially in our beachhead, validate our market did not see a difference between the two products sustainably
Sustainability is the cherry on top, product functionality comes first
Across all segments, while there were few who were motivated to buy only because something is sustainable, the vast majority needed another reason
From this, our baseline functionality and value proposition was developed…
Empower provides value to our customer segments in these key ways, ensuring product market fit with our MVP:
By providing control to decide where outlets are - they work for you
Lights make energy management clear and easy to digest, lowering your energy bills
Discrete translucent cord affixes to surface for uncluttered and productive workspace, with no need to move and interrupt tasks
Product Development
Product Design
We used interactive prototype software, Figma, so customer could go through the UX journey virtually.
Click here if you want to access the interactive prototype.
Market Identity
Personas
Persona #1: Chad Johnson
