Heat Match - Home Electrification with Climate Action Evanston
Working with Climate Action Evanston, we set out to encourage more homeowners to adopt heat pumps as a sustainable alternative to gas heating. We focused on unplanned homeowners, people who replace their systems only when they break. By looking into Evanston’s outdated heating infrastructure, we uncovered key barriers and explored how design could help residents make smarter, timely decisions about their homes.
Timeline
10 weeks, Winter 2025
Team
Jack Killian
Ann Mulgrew
Susan Ni
Ramya Ramaswamy
Krishna Suresh
Tools
Figma
Role
UX Designer
Service Designer
UX Researcher
Project Context
Climate Action Evanston (CAE) wants to encourage more residents to adopt heat pumps as a cleaner alternative for home heating and cooling. Our project focuses on a specific challenge within that goal: reaching unplanned homeowners - people who don’t think about replacing their HVAC systems until an urgent issue forces their hand. How might we assist CAE in introducing heat pumps as a viable option to unplanned homeowners before that moment of crisis?
01 Design Problem
CLIENT & TARGET STAKEHOLDERS
Climate Action Evanston is a nonprofit organization based in Evanston, IL, focused on building a more sustainable and environmentally conscious community. They have a variety of initiatives ranging from promoting home energy efficiency, supporting renewable energy adoption, reducing waste, encouraging native gardening, to advocating for cleaner transportation. At the heart of their work is a commitment to helping neighbors take action and making Evanston a greener, healthier place to live.
Why Heat Pumps?
Heat pumps are 3–5x more efficient than gas furnaces, providing year-round heating and cooling while cutting emissions. They work in cold climates and will get cleaner and cheaper as the grid shifts to renewables.
02 Secondary Research
We started off by completing secondary research. Finding out who is involved (who is affected by what but also who has contorl or responsibility over what occurs). We also wanted to see what the current challenges exist amongst homeowners and waht goals that they have with their HVAC. We also wanted to find out more about heat pumps (myths, why people would not want to adopt heat pumps, why they would want to adopt heat pumps). As each of us were doing secondary research individually, we took notes than had a sharing process of what we learned.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
From sharing and discussing our secondary research, we established three main takeaways: solar energy adoption, leveraging community networks, and barriers to progress.
KEY ACTIONS
We then determined who our stakeholders are and discovered what their role was within our design problem, what are their goals and motivations, and what potential and existing challenges they have.
FACTORS THAT ENCOURAGE VS DISCOURAGE HEAT PUMP ADOPTION
We then determined who our stakeholders are and discovered what their role was within our design problem, what are their goals and motivations, and what potential and existing challenges they have.
Financial
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Some areas operating cost is lower
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Lower cost than replacing both AC and furnace
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Many policy incentives that can be combined
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More stable and predictable cost compared to gas
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Long term savings as electrification becomes more common
Performance
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Heat pumps more evenly heat/cool homes
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Solar panels provide stable electricity
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Ductless mini-splits outperform window AC and electric baseboards in homes without central air
Environmental
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Higher coefficient of performance (COP); better efficiency
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More environmentally-friendly, less GHG emissions
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Less volatile refrigerants
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Quiet operation
Homeowners
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Higher upfront costs & high operating costs in places with steep electricity rates
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No motivation to replace equipment before the end of its use
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Lack of knowledge about heat pumps (also applicable to contractors)
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Lots of misconceptions about heat pumps in cold climates
Manufacturers & Distributors
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Shortage of heat pumps in distribution
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Higher manufacturing cost
Contractors
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Easier to stick with gas than introduce a new system
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Unfamiliar with heat pump tech bc it’s still new
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No standard set of proficiencies for heat pump installers and technicians
Policy Makers
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Limits on fuel switching in certain jurisdictions
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Natural gas utilities vs electricity utilities conflict
ROOT PROBLEM
Based on our secondary research, we determined two root causes that help explain both the need for and resistance to heat pump adoption. First, buildings are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, making sustainable HVAC options like heat pumps essential for reducing environmental impact. Second, outdated heating infrastructure helps explain why many homeowners are hesitant to adopt heat pumps, due to concerns around compatibility, cost, and complexity.
03 Primary Research
We were able to speak to a total of four people (three homeowners and our client!) to learn more about their experience with HVAC, goals, and challenges.
CONSTRAINTS
To keep our process as transparent as possible, we admit there were some constraints in terms of variety of data that we received. We recognize that we were not able to interview a diverse amount of participants (planners vs unplanned, only interviewed in Evanston, etc), therefore our data may be biased. We also recognize that there are other constraints mentioned by our participants.
MAKING SENSE OF OUR DATA
After hearing from our interviewees, we began developing a board with all of our observations and notes and began to pull out some insights.
Homeowners and businesses struggle to transition to cleaner alternatives due to....
so...
How might we help homeowners make informed HVAC decisions before they’re forced to act in an emergency?
04 Current Scenario
Once we've defined the root of the problem and our goals, we began developing a user persona and persona maps to further understand our design context and to realize what kinds of intervention we can develop.
USER PERSONA
Meet Bob. Bob is our persona that we developed from our insights and observations from our interviews. He is a homeowner who has a busy family and work life, so it's difficult for him to plan in advance.
CURRENT STATE JOURNEY
This is what Bob would do in his current situation if anything were to happen to his HVAC.
Bob is caught off guard when his furnace breaks down.
Bob calls for help from trusted sources (neighbors, family, friends).
Bob's post-service experience does not make him satisfied.
Bob is caught off guard when his furnace breaks down.
CURRENT STATE JOURNEY
This is what Bob would do in his current situation if anything were to happen to his HVAC.
Contractors and homeowners often focus on immediate cost savings or quick sales, overlooking the long-term financial and environmental benefits of heat pumps.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Priorities
Homeowners depend on contractors for guidance, but contractors have a financial incentive to recommend products that maximize their own sales, not necessarily the best long-term solution for the homeowner.
Contractor Trust vs. Sales Incentives
While heat pumps provide significant long-term savings, their initial cost can be prohibitive for budget-conscious homeowners, making adoption challenging.
Upfront Cost vs. Operational Savings
05 Concept Development
We explored a range of concepts, but what stood out most was the idea of a coaching platform. Rather than a single solution, our approach followed a timeline - each idea building on the next to form a cohesive service that supports homeowners through every step of the heat pump decision-making process. We explored this idea through our sketches!
Making people aware of CAE by attending popular neighborhood events.
Coaches walk door to door introducing themselves and creating more personal relationships with neighbors.
Coaches will be available to assist neighbors when problems arise.
Making people aware of CAE by attending popular neighborhood events.
We then mapped our concept to a series of “how might we” questions, using them as opportunities to guide our direction. This helped us make sure the key tensions we identified earlier were being thoughtfully addressed.
How might we elevate contractors that value new technology for customers?
How might we empower homeowners to make informed decisions about their HVAC system?
How might we create greater access to heat pumps for homeowners on a budget?
How might we elevate contractors that value new technology for customers?
06 Solution
brief description + hero image here!
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
We used a service blueprint to visualize how our proposed solution unfolds over time, broken into five main phases (see below). This helped us map out key interactions between people, necessary communications, the ideal sequence of events, and the behind-the-scenes (backstage) efforts that support what users directly experience (front stage), and more!
prototypes!
future state!
07 Reflections
To be completely honest, I never thought of service design as something that I would be interested in, especially in the context of HVAC. This project prompt seemed fairly ambiguous to me at first, but looking back now, I had really great experience and got to learn a lot!
What Went Well
Our team worked fairly well together - we were great at bouncing ideas off of each other and sharing what we learned from each round of interviews and research.
What Needs Work
We unfortunately had several scam interviews (people pretending to be someone who they are not, people not showing up, etc). As a result, our perspective on the problem is not as holistic as we intended.
What's Next
We’d love to conduct more interviews to gather a wider range of perspectives and continue testing and refining our prototypes. Since our partner is a local organization, we’re also excited about the potential to bring this work further into the community.
DSGN 401 -3 Service Design; taught by Dan Butt & David O'Donnell