ShowerKap

How does Showerkap make the world more sustainable?

Showerkap's solution is an innovative water management and monitoring system resulting in more sustainable public spaces, including hotels and offices. The products, which measure water consumption in individual outlets and throughout buildings, have been designed to reduce water and energy consumption, carbon emissions, and costs, using the behavioural nudge concept. The team at Showerkap believes that given the tools to make better decisions, everyone can significantly contribute to a greener future.

The challenge

Showerkap faced two main challenges. First, it's a completely new water conservation tool and innovative projects carry many unknowns and inherent risks. Will it work? Will there be demand? How much will it cost? How much profit will it bring? These are valid, yet difficult questions when you are creating a new product. Finding the direction and executing it can be impossible without having someone with experience in your corner to guide you.

The second challenge was technical expertise. The product comprises hardware – a flow measuring device – and software that calculates the usage on the one hand, but also nudges the users to encourage them to decrease their consumption. Showerkap needed experts that could build this kind of software and effectively integrate it with IoT devices.

How did Gorrion help?

Thankfully, we were able to help Showerkap with both of these challenges!

We pride ourselves on not being just a “coding workhorse” for our clients, but actual business partners. Thus, we were able to use our expertise and experience gained through working with hundreds of companies,to be the partner that Showerkap needed.

As for the expert support, we helped Showerkap come up with ideas for the overall product shape and features, and then organise them into a manageable roadmap that aligns with both their business needs and their budget. We also introduced them to software development processes and agile ways of working that seem natural to us because we’re so used to them, but to people outside they are a new and exciting way to operate efficiently. Throughout all of that, we provided them with extensive project management and support, that was adjusted to their needs and preferences. Our goal was not to just deliver features – it was to help our client sell an amazing product, whatever that entailed.

From a technical perspective, we developed a functional web and mobile app while remaining extremely flexible and open to client suggestions. We were also able to work on development without hardware in hand. This required us to build and connect a mock device to test the app, but we also had to keep in mind that when the prototype is ready, the architecture may need to be adjusted.

How we worked together

1. Workshops

   The goal of the first workshops was to learn about each other and set the direction of our partnership. First, we discussed business-related objectives, like Showerkap's vision and mission, market positioning, and user personas. Then, we brainstormed ideas for what the app should do and organised them on an impact/effort matrix to arrive at a roadmap for future development. We also discussed app specifics, like user flows and information architecture.

2. Alpha version

   With all that information, it was time to get to work – our designers and developers, led by a project manager, had their hands full with the alpha version! We had to set up the app’s architecture and prepare it for future integration with loT devices, using a mock device in the meantime. We developed basic tracking and reporting functionalities for the web and mobile versions of the app – including the main dashboard, alerts, and reports. And we designed the views and prepared a component library to keep all future designs consistent.

3. Demo

   At this point, what we've done thus far seemed like an impressive scope for less than three months work – at least from the perspective of a software development company. However, when you're looking at it from a client's perspective, you ask: "So, where's my product?".

   So, before we could move onto the next phase, we presented Showerkap with a demo of the product. The goal of this checkpoint was to review our work to date, make sure we were on the right track and decide what to focus on next.

4. More workshops

   With the alpha version ready and approved, it was back to the drawing board and to decide next steps.The best approach was to meet for structured workshops and to discuss further. Showerkap presented us with an updated strategy and business goals; we discussed threats and opportunities, brainstormed and prioritised the scope for the beta version and, most importantly, extensively discussed the nudge theory and how to apply it in development.

5. Beta version

   Up to this point, we were mostly working without a component that’s critical in all IoT projects – the physical device. It may surprise you, but this is a quite common occurrence in such innovative products where the hardware needs to be designed first as well. While it is entirely possible to manage this situation (especially when the team can work with the hardware engineers in the meantime), now that we had a prototype, we could improve the architecture and integrations. We also had plenty of features on our roadmap keeping us occupied!

6. First release

   Finally, having the hardware (that we tested in our office bathrooms!) allowed us to implement final touches to the app and release it to the world. A production-ready MVP meant that Showerkap could finally show a working product to investors and clients, and start collecting real-world data that would allow for further improvements in the future. While our work is far from done, stage one was successfully completed.