Electricasa
Overview
I participated in the 2019 Suncode Hackathon, an event that brings tech, green-energy, and financiers together to create and pitch solutions to today’s problems. We took home Third Place out of 20 teams and nearly 150 participants.
Team
North Lennox
Sehee Son
Role
Goal
Create a solution to Silicon Valley Clean Energy’s (SCVE) project prompt in less than 24 hours.
Scope
Eliminate or ease the barriers that stand in the way of 100% electrical single-family homes. This should be broadly accessible and easily implementable to SCVE’s customers.
Make it easy, make it fast.
The Prompt
Retrofitting existing buildings to all-electric face a variety of barriers. The objective of this challenge is to propose solutions to accelerate electrifying existing single-family homes by addressing one or more of the key barriers. Successful solutions will likely take a multidisciplinary approach and may focus on education, marketing, finance, data analysis, and/or to application development.
Solution
By using an API like Google Lens (AI Smart Photography) we could calculate appliance replacement timelines for our customers. Alongside this we could educate, create partnerships to incentivize both parties, and convince customers to buy green when the time came.
Team Formation & Strategy
We met again at 8 the following morning. With North’s expertise in the field, we knew that it is hard to incentivize users to switch to eco-friendly home alternatives. His idea consisted of:
- analyzing user photos
- creating a platform to engage and educate
- incentivizing green-purchasing.
“We have 10 hours- what can we get done?”
– North Lennox
Sketching
I began my design work as I always do: with a pen and paper. I sketched some quick layouts, referring to some well-known companies. As the clock was ticking, I moved quicker than usual into Figma.
Mockups
I created a quick series of main screens- something we could quickly code interactions between. These included,
- The Onboarding / Sign-In page
- The Homepage
- Profile Page
Social Media and Newsletter
To flesh out our app’s ecosystem I also created Twitter and Instagram accounts for Electricasa. This would help create a long-term relationship between SCVE and the customer base, and ultimately a more holistic, thoughtful experience.
I really enjoy this aspect of design: ideating-out in unexpected ways. I appreciate the opportunity to do something novel and thought-provoking, even if it ultimately doesn’t make the final cut.
Come visit our pages at ElectriCasa on Twitter, and Electri.casa on Instagram!
Results and Reflections
We pitched our design in three minutes, with one minute allotted to questions. There was a great deal of interest in our product such that we ran over our minute! When it came time to announce winners, we were amazed and delighted that we won Third Place! We spoke with SVCE at the after-party, as well as VC’s, recruiters, and well-wishers.
This was my first hackathon, and I loved the entire experience (winning third helped as well.) It was a lot of fun to create in a constrained environment. I really enjoyed seeing other team’s creativity. I will definitely be competing in more to come.
Next Steps
We had a fair amount of interest in our idea. Since the hackathon:
- Sehee has continued to work on the webapp. It’s grown a lot since that Saturday in May, 2019.
- North has secured some funding to keep the project going. He’s had plenty more ideas that I’m excited to share in the future.
- I’ve gone back to polish and expand on my quick designs. I’ve fleshed out more of connecting pages.
- In addition to the screens, I’ve conducted competitive research, created a site map, user flows & journeys, a style sheet, branding guide.
Our work isn’t ready to be shown here yet, but it’s progressing well. I can’t wait to see where we go from here.
