I rapidly created insights to inform the design of a new service while influencing the policy thinkers at Ofgem – The U.K’s Heat Network regulator.
gMy role
Lead User Researcher
Activities
User Research, generating insights, user testing, surveys, client presentations
Research momentum delivered: Conducted 45 interviews across 6-8 weeks, rebuilding stakeholder confidence after previous researcher’s limited progress. As one stakeholder put it: “It was like night and day after you started.”
Evidence-driven decisions: Research insights influenced language changes, user segmentation approach, and Beta planning considerations including collaborative workflow functionality and pre-registration support materials.
GDS Alpha assessment passed: Comprehensive research evidence package impressed assessors with range, frequency, and depth of user insights.
How can Ofgem create a registration journey and outreach plan that heat networks of all sizes and setups can engage with and understand to become compliant with new policy and regulations?
Co-creative foundation: Co-created core research questions for the Alpha phase with the team, ensuring alignment on what we needed to learn and how to test key assumptions.
Industry immersion: Reached out to industry contacts for depth interviews and desk research to rapidly develop understanding of the sector and regulatory challenges.
Strategic outreach: Through key industry contacts, particularly The Heat Trust (facilitated by Ofgem), I built relationships that enabled access to established networks. This approach allowed me to distribute communications through community channels, newsletters, and industry portals, successfully recruiting a diverse range of participants.
Research operations: Scaled outreach by creating a research web portal for participants to give consent and manage 1-2-1 interview scheduling, reducing admin overhead and enabling rapid recruitment.
Iterative feedback loop: Established weekly cadence of interviews to build understanding and test latest designs from the UCD team. I worked side-by-side with service and content designers to share insights and develop recommendations for prototype iterations.
Results: 45 interviews across 6-8 weeks with daily testing rhythm, providing continuous evidence flow to support design decisions.
What I discovered: Users weren’t completing forms individually – they were creating collaborative workflows, copying questions into PowerPoints, distributing across organizations, then consolidating responses offline.
How this influenced Beta thinking:
Language validation: Challenged terms like “Heat Network Owner” that users rejected as unclear, leading to regulatory communication changes.
User segmentation insight: Moved from organizational categories (council, energy company) to readiness levels, influencing Ofgem’s outreach strategy for less mature networks.
Future roadmap influence: Raised API/automation possibilities that opened new digital strategy discussions policy team hadn’t considered.
Reporting, with insights, personas and quantitive data anaylsis
Weekly iteration cycle: Daily interviews → Friday synthesis → immediate design changes → test updated prototype the following week.
Key decisions driven by insights:
Service design influence:
Strategic influence:
Stakeholder transformation:
From research crisis to partnership confidence, enabling successful Alpha progression to Beta.
As the team had lost the initial user researcher before I joined, I was short on time, therefor there was an emphasis on rapid and lean research. The approach to focus heavily on 1-2-1 interviews worked well, although it did take a few rounds for me to feel orientated within the deep sector language.
The frequent user testing was critical in providing regular and iterative feedback to the service and content designers. In order to ensure we focused on the biggest risk (understanding & positioning in the sector) we tested using low-fi prototypes. This ensured we didn’t get distracted with interaction design but rather on the fundamentals of the service and proposition. Unfortunately the GDS alpha assessment team felt that without having tested using the prototype kit we would fail the assessment. This was disappointing but was remedied with 2 sprints of additional testing using the prototype kit which helped the team develop their understanding further.
The biggest indicator of success for me was not the initial GDS assessment but rather the feedback and strength of relationship with the client. They were happy and had the insights they needed to feel confident enough to proceed.