Here’s a sneak peak look at a possible change to the OVO app - tell us what you think

I presume there’s no voice over - I could get anything. Perhaps screen commentary might help the viewing for this 

I couldn’t tell if you could still get to a breakdown of each day/week etc as you could when I last looked. That’s important as many years compare today with yesterday or the same day last week (eg Tuesday might have a different pattern to other days so comparing Tuesdays might be more useful).

If by similar homes, it is meant similar size; bedrooms, occupancy etc then some will find it useful. Some comparisons make odd compares such as compared to the ‘average’ home .. whatever that means

The key to this part is the accuracy. If the usage within the category is fairly accurate, then the comparison might also be - typical usage will depend on a number of factors , occupancy, home during day, lifestyle. The bar colouring could be a guide .. darker colours ; higher usage

Whilst these updates will aid some, the baseline to get data granularity which can then be manipulated and viewed to best help the particular user needs to be the goal. That’s still why I use a variety of views from different packages, all driven by the base data provided by my account API

Thanks for the view

My preference is for viewing charts against previous periods, with an EV charger this pushes Electric use up it would appear in comparison to similar homes, unless that is taken into consideration as part of similar home. 

Its an insightful app and I like the features though would be good to include the ‘Your EV’ as you have on the Ovo Portal.

I’m only interested in comparing my own usage against my usage in different times e.g. previous month, previous year. I see no benefit in comparing with similar households.

I see no benefit in the breakdown of usage into different categories this doesn’t interest me. 
I assume the tips for reducing usage would be the same as on the website - I haven’t found these to be of any use to me so I don’t think I’d think much of the ones on the app.

the charts themselves look clear and easy to navigate which is good, I do like to be able to switch between price and volume used on these charts as it allows you to see the effect of price changes.

It’s a little tricky for me, but I’d say comparing with similar homes would be nice to have, as long as there are actual “similar” homes to compare against. My unusual usage patterns might limit the value for me though.

With that said, I do find the tips and categories in the concepts more helpful than they currently are!

Apart from click sound effects, there is no explanation or other sounds. I can see you have tried to estimate the usage in various categories based on “similar” houses but do you have any idea if there are smart devices which turn appliances on and off according to systems such as Home Assistant or the like. How can the “similar” house use a consistent amount of electricity or gas every single day with what looks like no variation due to type of day - weekday or weekend, bank holiday, weather conditions  or any other variations? I find some of the estimates of what we are doing is wildly off the mark, so doubt that they are likely to improve in the near future.

Thanks everyone, it’s super helpful to get this insight. Our Product seem are seeing this and may jump in with some follow up questions or context. 

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you @waiwurrie @John12345 @Mal1955 @tony1tf @andrewpbclarke 

At first glance I like the new layout, I don’t use the app much if I’m being honest. Lots going on, but it’s all very clearly laid out. I haven’t set up the insight part yet but may do now. Being able to compare to similar homes might be a good thing.  

First - is this in the OVO Energy app, or OVO Beyond? Or for when Beyond is incorporated into the principal app? 

A few comments:

• I wouldn’t use a phone for this sort of thing. That’s probably just me, but I’d always use a big screen wherever possible.
• I’m very suspicious of the ‘similar homes’ data without knowing how they’re identified. There are undoubtedly as many different usage patterns as there are ‘detached 1- bedroom bungalows’, but probably not that many ‘200-year-old stone-walled gas-free 1-bedroom cottages in the East Midlands with a single vegetarian occupant home all day not using electricity for heating.’ This devalues the comparisons for me. 
• Does telemetry indicate that most users concentrate on cost rather than consumption? I wonder how the comparative costs are arrived at, and I can’t see how they could be helpful without knowing. It could be that an 🛈 pop-out could explain, but we can’t see this in the video. 
• Similarly, comparisons by date (‘same date last month’) aren’t much use. Comparing 21 April with 21 March is pretty meaningless for most households, since one is a Thursday and the other a Sunday. 
• It would be helpful if days of the week were shown on the bar charts. A suggestion I’ve made before: make each ‘month’ chart 35 days wide. The extra days could either be populated if data are available, or left blank. This would make ‘month-on-month’ comparisons much more meaningful if days of the week matched up.

[I seem to have ignored your questions; feel free to ignore my responses in return 🙂]

Hi @Firedog ,  

These are all very valid points and we can take them away and try and get you some more answers. I think it’s good to open this up as a discussion as it can help us understand changes from your perspective. 

If you have any follow up points we would be happy to hear them! 

I will get back to you when we know more.

Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate your input — it really does help understand how we can improve this feature!

@andrewpbclarke @BPLightlog @Blastoise186 @Guy Crosby @Firedog you called out not knowing what is meant by ‘similar homes’ or it not being clear enough. 

We’ve tried to explain what we mean when we say ‘similar homes’ with this overlay — this would be accessed from the Usage graph, as shown with the pink dot on the second screen.

We’ve categorised them by a few attributes: 

• Region (there has to be a minimum of 500 properties in an area with similar attributes)
• Property type (Bungalow is combined with Detached)
• Number of bedrooms
• Heating type (Elec only, Gas only or dual fuel)
• EV ownership (if a customer owns an EV, we will compare their usage to other EV owners)

Would this would help you understand how OVO is identifying similar homes to compare against? 

Do you have any more thoughts on how this could be improved? 

Thanks again!