Company: Publicis Sapient
Year: 2019
Role: Experience Designer
British Gas wanted to create a voice solution to help people stay warm during the cold weather.
For 8 weeks we worked with British Gas to create a safe, easy-to-use Action on Google that helps people troubleshoot common boiler issues.
We created Boiler Support - powered by British Gas-, an Action on Google that guides users through safe, step-by-step tutorials based on the problems they’re experiencing.
We used British Gas’s knowledge and data to target the most common problems that people experience, especially during cold weather.
We worked closely with boiler engineers to identify the steps people need to follow to solve the problems. We then prioritised and designed conversational modules -that we organised in journeys- to tackle as many problems as possible.
Part of the design process included the definition of the persona and tone of voice of the Action. We adapted British Gas’s existing tone of voice and developed a persona that is supportive, knowledgeable, sympathetic, relatable and trustworthy.
One of the biggest barriers we had to overcome was people’s fear of interacting with their boilers. Through many iterations we ensured that the assistant made our users feel safe and reassured while they carried out the tests.
We ran 6 different rounds of usability testing to gather feedback on the journeys and the tone of voice. We tested the conversational modules at different levels of fidelity. We evolved from our first test with paper boilers and a VoiceFlow prototype to our final test with a beta version of the Action and real boilers in an engineer academy.
On our final testing session, we gave participants a fully functional version of the Action and put them in front of real boilers with real problems. Four out of five participants managed to fix the boilers using voice!
In just 8 weeks we delivered a fully functional Action on Google that can now be accessed by millions.
So, next time you have an issue with your heating or hot water just tell Google: “Hey Google, talk to Boiler Support”.
You can learn more about Boiler Support on the British Gas website
Selected Work
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Government Digital Services (GDS)Interaction design & Research
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