Who we worked with
Contact Energy
What we did together
Design sprint
Key Skills
Problem Discovery, Ideation, Prototyping
Contact Energy is one of New Zealand’s leading energy generators and retailers, providing electricity, natural gas and LPG to about 562,000 customers nationwide.
The team at Contact Energy wanted to create disruptive innovation within their industry and had a lot of ideas about how they could reach this goal. Although the team was confident in their ideas, they wanted to find a way to validate the concepts before investing in expensive build-outs.
While some team members had used Design Thinking methodologies in the past, Contact Energy wanted to expedite the process. They turned to our team to facilitate a Design Sprint and implement agile techniques to validate their ideas.
“The mentors and coaches at Creative HQ are very open-minded and bring a fresh approach to disruptive innovation. Creative HQ’s Design Sprints helped Contact Energy to not only validate our ideas but has also helped our company start applying Design Thinking approach to our overall business approach”
Cyril Groisard, Digital UX Architect & Strategist
CONTACT ENERGY
How we did it
Contact Energy needed a partner that aligned with their agile approach to innovation and could guide the team through a Design Sprint to validate their disruptive business ideas and product offerings. They also required partners that would be able to maximize their diverse team of new and seasoned employees, some of whom had never worked with the Design Thinking methodologies in the past.
A team of seven employees moved into Creative HQ’s office for five days to immerse themselves in the strategies that would allow the team to obtain more detailed customer feedback to validate their growth concepts. With help from the Creative HQ coaches and mentors, the team evolved their original concept into an offering that was quickly tested and validated by their current customers.
The result
During the five-day Design Sprint:
- We introduced the team to new strategies and guided them through the Design Sprint process to develop prototypes for new business ideas in under five days.
- We helped the team collect and utilize in-depth customer feedback to validate new ideas and refine current product offerings.
- We aligned new employees with more seasoned employees to utilize Design Thinking in day-to-day life.
