Energy Reports
As half-hourly energy data grows in importance, I led the research and design of a new reporting tool for SSE's business customers — interviewing users across small businesses, large commercial clients, and third-party intermediaries to understand how they actually used the data day-to-day. The result was an intuitive dashboard experience that made complex consumption data simple to interpret, delivered end-to-end from discovery through to final design.
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Industry
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Challenge
SSE wanted to rethink how business customers accessed and used their half-hourly energy data — a powerful dataset that reveals usage patterns, inefficiencies, and cost-saving opportunities.
Before designing anything, I needed to answer one question: how do customers actually use this data? Speaking with product owners, analysts, and support teams quickly revealed that internal assumptions about customer needs were far from the reality.
Approach
We interviewed business customers who regularly work with half-hourly data — from facilities managers to sustainability officers and finance teams — asking them to walk us through their real workflows. One insight reframed the entire project: the most important thing wasn't the visualisation, it was the ability to download clean, reliable data to plug into their own internal systems. Visualisation mattered too, but as a way to quickly spot spikes and irregularities without manually sifting through thousands of rows.
These two needs — data export first, visual clarity second — gave the project a clear, user-led direction from the start.
With two clear user needs defined, I designed around both — a reliable, clean download experience for data-driven users, and an at-a-glance dashboard with read…With two clear user needs defined, I designed around both — a reliable, clean download experience for data-driven users, and an at-a-glance dashboard with readable charts and pattern recognition for reporting users. Moving from wireframes through to final visual design, I ensured the experience worked both as an interactive dashboard and an exportable report.
The result was a 35% reduction in support contacts related to energy data queries, with customers finally able to access, interpret, and export their half-hourly data without picking up the phone.
Over 1,500 monthly visitors return to the half-hourly dashboard each month — and user research told us why. Interviews with Third Party Intermediaries identified half-hourly data as one of the most critical datasets in their workflow, giving them the granular visibility needed to actively manage their customers' energy bills. Designing for that need wasn't just a UX win — it directly supports a key part of SSE's commercial relationship with its partners.
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