Chameleon Technology

Chameleon Technology builds smart energy products and the ivie home energy app. When I joined (via Gengame Ltd), the company had little established UX research practice — the culture was engineering-led ("build it and they will see"), so research had to prove its value to stakeholders who were used to shipping on instinct. The business had two open questions with real money behind them:

1. Solar & storage: How do UK households actually research, buy and install solar panel + battery systems — and where are the pain points and market gaps Chameleon could productise?
2. Future energy markets: What consumer appetite exists for buying and paying for household energy in new ways (bundled "energy packages", heat pumps, solar, batteries, EV chargers) — enough to justify entering a government innovation programme run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)?

The second question mattered commercially: DESNZ funding for the Alternative Energy Markets (AEM) programme depended on credible consumer evidence, not engineering enthusiasm.

I was the lead researcher on both workstreams. The brief was broad and — in the solar case — deliberately open: explore the end-to-end experience of buying and installing solar and battery systems, identify user needs, pain points and market gaps, and feed that understanding into product decisions. For the AEM workstream, the task was sharper: generate robust evidence on consumer appetite for future energy bundles and payment models, including households in fuel poverty, and support the funding application to DESNZ.

There was no playbook to follow — I had to design the research programme, recruit participants, run the studies, analyse and present findings, and earn stakeholder confidence as I went.

Workstream 1 — Solar & storage research (exploratory, methods built up in stages):

• Desk and market research: analysed ONS data on low-carbon technology adoption and ran "mystery shopper" research with solar installation companies to map the real buying landscape, package structures and sales practices — including where behaviour crossed into the unethical.
• Large-scale survey with ivie app users: designed a survey from the market findings to probe behaviour patterns of prospective solar customers. It was the most successful survey run on the ivie app to that point — 1,500 relevant responses within 48 hours (typical ivie surveys ran a week to ten days for under 1,000). This was the result of careful question design plus close work with the marketing and customer-care teams on targeting.
• Prototype testing of the "Path to Net Zero" tool: recruited prospective solar customers from the survey pool and ran 1:1 remote sessions (Rilla) walking users through two prototype options in Figma/Miro. I used quantitative measures (SEQ, success rates, SUS) alongside observation, because stakeholders wanted numbers they could hold on to.
• Synthesis & reporting: analysed the mixed data, and presented findings to stakeholders and the wider team — a PowerPoint plus Confluence report — feeding product, engineering and marketing.

Workstream 2 — AEM / future energy markets research:

• Designed and ran a survey of 1,000+ ivie app users on appetite for alternative energy products and payment models, working with energy market experts (Cornwall Insight and Energy Catapult) to price realistic future energy bundles.
• Translated the quantitative findings into an accessible visual presentation and submitted it to DESNZ alongside expert energy price projections.
• Ran usability testing sessions to validate how consumers understood the bundle concepts, checking for jargon and comprehension.

Working practice: I managed the full research lifecycle end-to-end — methodology design, recruitment, data collection, analysis, presentation — and collaborated daily with the ivie product owner, designers, developers, engineers, marketing and customer care. I deliberately positioned myself as a bridge between the engineering mindset and user-centred design.

• Product impact: the solar research shaped the next steps for both the ivie app and the engineering team — including a "Path to Net Zero" journey tool that went live in the ivie app, plus follow-on product work and collaborations with solar installation companies.
• Business impact: the AEM research contributed to Chameleon being accepted into round two of the DESNZ AEM programme — a funded, real-world follow-on study (installing green technology in homes at a discounted rate to test energy bundles in live settings) that would not have gone ahead without the initial evidence.
• Capability impact: demonstrated to a sceptical, engineering-led organisation what good user research produces. Stakeholders who had never used research began requesting it; quantitative measures were adopted as a norm for future studies.

The solar project's open brief was both a gift and a trap — undefined objectives create room to explore, but it's easy to spend time on areas that don't align with company priorities. With hindsight I'd run it on a tighter timeline and check in against business goals more often. I'd also have liked deeper qualitative follow-up (interviews after the survey, more open questions) to explain the "why" behind the numbers — with more time I would have added that layer. The core lesson: in an organisation new to research, the fastest way to build credibility is connecting findings to decisions the business actually has to make.