Abstract
In order to improve the efficiency of the housing stock successfully, the offered technical solutions also need to meet occupants' needs and match their aspirations. Owner-occupiers present particular challenges: conflicting demands on their use of time and financial resources and their role as decision-makers for their own domestic renovation. A persona-driven study (based on user-centred design) was undertaken to explore the varying behaviours, attitudes and motivations towards home improvement for owner-occupiers who live in ‘hard to treat’ solid-walled dwellings. Five evidence-based personas are constructed that reflect archetypes, based on the outcomes of a qualitative study involving 33 owner-occupier householders in the East Midlands region of the UK. The adoption of a persona-based approach in response to the socio-technical challenges of energy renovation is important for understanding the specific drivers and appropriate range of policy responses for each persona. The persona development process is described and the success of the approach is evaluated in relation to the needs of policy developers, energy providers and product developers. Tailoring strategies to suit different personas will considerably enhance the diffusion of policy goals for low-energy retrofit and also allow business and technology developers to target an appropriate user.
Highlights
With 28% of the UK’s energy used by the domestic sector (DECC, 2012) and at least 75% of the UK dwellings that will exist in 2050 already built (Wright, 2008) and a housing stock turnover of only about 1% per annum, there is a clear need for energy efficiency measures to focus on renovation of the existing stock
This paper reports the findings from a study of home improvement amongst a group of owner-occupiers in solid-wall dwellings and draws on tools from User Experience (UX) Design to help understand how these past home improvement projects can be used to describe different types of owner-occupiers in this context
The personas presented in this paper have been created from detailed qualitative data from a small sample of people who live in owner-occupied, solid-wall dwellings in the UK
Summary
With 28% of the UK’s energy used by the domestic sector (DECC, 2012) and at least 75% of the UK dwellings that will exist in 2050 already built (Wright, 2008) and a housing stock turnover of only about 1% per annum, there is a clear need for energy efficiency measures to focus on renovation of the existing stock. Whilst there are technical solutions that will minimize energy losses and reduce demand, these need to meet people’s needs and match their aspirations to be fully effective. Owner-occupiers, who represent 65% of the UK housing stock (DECC, 2013), present particular challenges to policy-makers, designers and suppliers. As the decision-maker in the process, owner-occupiers face often conflicting demands upon their use of time and financial resources. In order to persuade this group to prioritize investment in energy renovation and domestic energy products and services, it is necessary to understand further their relationships to their homes and their attitudes towards making improvements to their homes. Hewitt (2012, p. 1) identifies that any technological intervention in addition to being cost-effective ‘must be acceptable to the use, in terms of minimal disruption during installation, ease of use and alignment with lifestyle expectation’
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