The Domestic Building Services segment in Grundfos focuses on private housing and domestic pump applications. Business developers in this area are responsible for evaluating the business opportunities for the company within the scope of the segment and its applications. As a result, they are a very product driven team, being the majority of their customers wholesalers and installers.

Against this backdrop, the company’s digital transformation adds up possibilities for this segment to develop digitally enabled offerings targeted to homeowners. This shift on the target audience, required business developers' research efforts to focus on the new consumer group towards unlocking value in the smart home ecosystem.

The beginning of the collaboration with the business developers involved reviewing existing research material, attending relevant conventions and webinars about the smart home market and conducting in context interviews with homeowners. This way, we yielded key insights about the smart home market, its players as well as consumers' positions.

These insights were key in building a framework with the homeowner at the centre that enabled identifying the right questions to ask in order to create new starting points for IoT strategies, other than technological possibilities.

We decided on running generative sessions with homeowners as the best methodology to address the research goal, as it would allow us learning new ways to approach the understanding of homeowners in order to innovate. The key here was to tailor and customize different design research techniques in order to yield actionable insights.

I facilitated two generative sessions with six homeowners each. The sessions where designed to first immerse participants in the present situation by sharing personal experiences; then in the past by awakening their memories and associations; and finally, building on the awakened sensitivity and awareness, they would explore situations in possible futures.

User diaries

One-week Me and my home diaries aimed at making it fun and easy for homeowners to make observations and reflect upon their safety rituals, green practices or current routines at home. The filled user diaries represent an exceptional testimony of how everyday people can become useful partners to inspire the design process when given the appropriate tools.

A careful analysis of all the data gathered throughout the generative sessions involved playing with findings throughout the wall to derive meaningful insights, themes and opportunity areas. Using cards containing relevant quotes and written interpretations facilitated the synthesis process by making it easier to draw connections.

Having familiarized with the data and the different clusters, I constructed several models that became key in capturing the research insights, as well as in establishing the guiding principles to drive the portfolio strategy and opportunities.

Drawing on the inspiring and engaging insights and stories coming from the generative sessions, I planned and designed a series of brainstorming sessions to facilitate the generation and sharing of ideas from multidisciplinary stakeholders.

I designed a model for playing in the design opportunity space in order to help stakeholders with different backgrounds generate, share and communicate ideas about the future.

Through the compilation and combination of ideas, we identified a number of potential digitally enabled value propositions for which I sketched different end-user scenarios and concepts. On a shorter-term perspective, we targeted the value propositions at the homeowner segments currently retained by the company with its cold water applications.

On a longer-term perspective, I sketched scenarios truly embedded in the smart home ecosystem by having Grundfos as one more player contributing to value creation. These scenarios enabled us to show the inherent value delivered to homeowners by having a more connected lifestyle.

The high-impact insights delivered allowed business developers for their easy incorporation and adoption as the foundation for the connected portfolio strategy. At the same time, the insights also boosted innovative ideas on future opportunities within the smart home market that were incorporated as part of Grundfos Future Lab initiative.

Furthermore, the developed IoT business model tool is currently being used by strategic consultants in Grundfos to facilitate discussions with possible partnerships within the smart home ecosystem towards defining concrete digital offerings and exploring new business models.