Hardware-plus-software energy products get designed around the economic decision-maker and the certification checklist, while the installer, facility manager, and grid operator who actually touch the system daily get skipped. We run the research that surfaces what those users need before a design freeze locks in a costly redesign. The result is a product that survives contact with the field.
The Problem
Engineering-Led Culture Skips User Research Until It's Too Late
Most cleantech companies are founded by engineers solving a hardware or grid problem, and product research gets treated as a nice-to-have layered on after the spec is locked. By the time anyone talks to an installer or facility manager, the enclosure, wiring harness, and firmware architecture are already fixed. Fixing a usability problem post-certification means re-running UL or IEC testing, which can add months and six figures to a roadmap that was supposed to ship this quarter.
The Economic Buyer and the Daily User Are Almost Never the Same Person
A CFO or sustainability officer signs off on a fleet of EV chargers or a battery storage system, but a facility manager or site technician is the one troubleshooting it at 6am when a fault code shows up. Research that only interviews the signing authority misses the friction that drives support tickets, warranty claims, and the quiet decision not to renew. That gap shows up eighteen months later as churn nobody predicted.
Certification and Compliance Constraints Get Bolted On, Not Designed In
UL 9540, IEC 61730, and utility interconnection standards aren't optional – they're gating requirements that determine what the product can physically look like and how it can behave. When compliance gets treated as a final gate instead of a design input, teams discover restrictions late: an enclosure that needs re-engineering, a firmware behavior that violates an interconnection rule, a labeling requirement that changes the whole UI. Each one is a re-spec, and re-specs after tooling is committed are expensive.
Multi-Stakeholder Feedback Never Makes It Back to the Design Team
An installer's complaint about conduit clearance, a grid operator's note about a communication protocol mismatch, a facility manager's request for a louder alarm – all of it gets logged in a support ticket or a sales call note and never routed back to whoever owns the next hardware revision. Without a structured research loop, the same field friction gets rediscovered every product cycle instead of getting fixed once.
How We Help
We start by mapping every human who touches the product across its lifecycle – the installer running conduit, the facility manager monitoring uptime, the grid operator receiving telemetry, and the economic buyer who signed the PO. Most cleantech teams have only ever formally interviewed the last one. We build a research plan that gets structured time with the other three before the next design freeze, not after.
Field research comes first: site visits with installers mid-job, shadowing a facility manager's actual monitoring workflow, and reviewing real fault logs instead of the ones engineering assumes are common. This is where the actual friction lives, and it rarely matches what the product team believes is the problem. We document it in a form the engineering team can act on – not a slide deck of quotes, but specific findings tied to specific design decisions.
We pull compliance and certification requirements into the research phase itself, working alongside your engineering lead to flag which usability findings conflict with UL, IEC, or interconnection standards before anyone commits to tooling. That means a design direction gets validated against certification constraints in week four, not discovered as a blocker in month nine. Our /services/strategy/ team helps translate those constraints into a product roadmap that doesn't require a mid-cycle redesign.
On the output side, we deliver research findings mapped directly to design decisions: which enclosure changes reduce installer callbacks, which firmware behaviors reduce facility-manager support tickets, which telemetry format actually gets used by grid operators versus ignored. Every finding ties to a specific, testable product change, not a vague usability theme.
We also build the feedback loop that most cleantech teams never set up – a structured channel where installer and facility-manager friction gets logged, tagged, and routed to the next hardware or firmware revision automatically, instead of getting rediscovered from scratch every cycle. That loop is the difference between fixing a problem once and re-litigating it every eighteen months.
Most agencies treat cleantech product research like consumer UX research with a different logo. We don't – we build the research plan around certification gates, multi-stakeholder buying committees, and the fact that your product has to survive a field technician in a bucket truck, not just a usability lab.
By the end of the engagement, your next design freeze reflects what installers, facility managers, and grid operators actually need – not just what the economic buyer asked for in a sales call.
What we deliver
- Multi-stakeholder research plan covering installer, facility manager, grid operator, and economic buyer
- Field research findings tied to specific, testable design decisions
- Certification and compliance constraint mapping against usability findings
- Fault-log and support-ticket analysis translated into design priorities
- Structured feedback loop routing field friction into the next product revision
- Research-backed product roadmap input for engineering and /services/strategy/
The person who signs the PO for a cleantech product is almost never the person troubleshooting it at 6am – and most product research only ever talks to the first one.
Our Methodology
We run product design research as a 90-day sprint tied to your actual design-freeze calendar, not an open-ended discovery process. Days 1-30 are field research: site visits, installer shadowing, facility-manager workflow sessions, and a review of real fault and support-ticket data. You get a written findings document before any design conversation happens.
Days 31-60 are translation: each finding gets mapped to a specific design decision and cross-checked against UL, IEC, or interconnection constraints with your engineering lead, so nothing surfaces late as a certification blocker. Days 61-90 are handoff: a prioritized design-input document goes to your product and engineering teams, along with the structured feedback loop that keeps future field friction from getting lost.
This isn't a usability-lab exercise. It's built around the fact that a cleantech product has to satisfy a certification body, an installer in the field, a facility manager at a desk, and a grid operator reading telemetry – and most teams have only ever designed for one of them.
How We Work
Weeks 1-4: field research phase, including site visits and stakeholder interviews, delivered as a written findings report with a live walkthrough for your product and engineering leads. Weeks 5-8: translation phase, mapping findings to design decisions and certification constraints in working sessions with your engineering team.
Weeks 9-12: handoff phase, delivering the prioritized design-input document and standing up the structured feedback loop, plus one full cycle of field-friction intake to confirm it's routing correctly.
You get a research lead who owns the field work, a compliance-aware strategist who cross-checks findings against certification constraints, and a facilitator who runs the translation sessions with your engineering team – all working from a weekly sync during the field and translation phases.
Expect direct access to raw findings, not just a summary deck, and a written status update every Friday during the active research phase. If your next design freeze is locked before this research happens, the fixes get a lot more expensive.
If your cleantech product needs research before the next redesign, we should talk.
- Fewer installer callbacks and warranty claims tied to field friction
- Reduced certification-driven redesigns after tooling is committed
- Design decisions backed by real fault and support-ticket data
- A standing feedback loop from field to product roadmap
If your cleantech & energy company needs product design & research leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does product design research cost for a cleantech company?
Most engagements run $12K-$25K for the 90-day sprint, depending on how many stakeholder groups and site visits are involved. A single-product line with one installer network costs less than a multi-product platform with distributed field teams across several states.
How long before this research changes our product roadmap?
You get a written findings document within 30 days and a prioritized design-input document by day 90, timed so it lands before your next design freeze. The value shows up immediately in what gets decided in that freeze meeting, not months later.
How does your research team work with our existing engineering staff?
We embed alongside your engineering lead rather than handing over a report and disappearing – the certification cross-check in particular has to happen with someone who owns your compliance filings. Your product and engineering teams sit in on the translation sessions where findings become design decisions. We don't make design calls unilaterally; we make sure the people who do have the field data they were missing.
What makes Winston Francois different from a UX research agency?
A generic UX research shop runs usability labs and interviews the person who signed the contract. We build research plans around the fact that your product has four different stakeholders – installer, facility manager, grid operator, and economic buyer – and around the reality that a usability finding can conflict with a UL or interconnection requirement. We've done this specifically for hardware-plus-software energy products, not consumer apps.
How do you measure ROI on a product research engagement?
We track fewer installer callbacks, fewer support tickets tied to known usability friction, and whether the next design freeze avoids a certification-driven rework. Those are leading indicators because the real ROI – fewer warranty claims and higher renewal rates – shows up over the following product cycles. We don't promise a specific cost-savings number upfront since it depends on how much field friction currently exists in your product.
What stage of cleantech company is the right fit for this service?
This works best for companies at $5M-$100M ARR with a product already in the field – enough installed base to generate real fault and support data, and an upcoming design freeze or hardware revision where the findings can actually get used. A pre-launch hardware concept usually needs a /services/strategy/ conversation first to define the product before researching it. If you have installers filing the same complaint every quarter, that's the signal it's time.
