That’s what the water company had for its data dive event in July, when it invited people to spend their Friday evening and Saturday trawling through consumption data in a bid to develop a prototype on how to encourage water efficiency.
The outcome, following a day of discussion, idea sharing, presentations, and plenty of post-it notes, was a series of demonstrations of water savings apps, data dashboards, and even a unique toilet accessory. These ideas were all taken on board by Yorkshire Water, and the company is now looking to develop some of these ideas – some of which could be rolled out by the autumn.
The event was the brain child of Yorkshire Water’s business support group project manager Matt Hill. He pitched the idea to the top brass at the company via the Utility Week award winning Hot Seat Scheme – which allows staff one day a week to work on an initiative – and following a vote this was the chosen project.
After pairing up with the Leeds node of the Open Data Institute, Hill and Yorkshire Water took the “scary but exciting step” and opened up its data to the public. Once that step had been made – “it’s like throwing open the stable door, once you’ve done it you can’t go back” – it was about drumming up interest. Not easy when it’s up against Wimbledon, the Tour de France, and the first Ashes test. Despite this, more than 50 people turned up – “a fantastic turnout and far beyond our expectations,” according to founder of ODI Leeds Paul Connell.
These included a couple of self-confessed data geeks, a group of French students on a visit to Bradford University, Yorkshire Water staff eager to take on extracurricular activities, a number of utility consultants, and “hard core” civil engineers.
The event kicked off on the Friday evening, where everyone introduced themselves, split up into teams, took the important decision of naming their teams, roughed out the ideas they were going to work, and then headed to a local bar for a drink.
The next morning, the job of working through their ideas and developing the prototypes began.
Les Technophiles, the team of French students – happy to take part as it tied in with their course – developed a water saving app and the idea of gamification. “We want to get people to compare how much they use,” said team member Davina. “This would act as a challenge for people to use less and to be the best in their area.”
The idea of an app was also jumped upon by rival teams, such as the N-Musketeers (a team of Bradford University students), and the Fujitsu and Arup team, made up of civil engineers and consultants.
N-Musketeer Dan – who was pointed towards the event by his lecturer – told Utility Week their app would give the customers points depending on what water saving measures they successfully completed. “Point scoring has proved to be successful and addictive,” he said. “Adding this in would drive people on to cut back.
”Keen not to be upstaged by their younger competitors, the Fujitsu and Arup team took to the demonstration floor and shared their app: My Water Saving Pal.
Aside from recording consumption and comparing data with neighbours, it would also provide targeted hints and tips for each customer. The group also stated rewards, such as donations to Water Aid or water bottles, could be offered to those who hit their water saving targets.
Away from gamification was Futurama’s Splashboard. This was aimed at the Yorkshire Water call centre staff and would provide them with consumption data on their customers and track who has been targeted with water efficiency campaigns.
The colourful, and post-it note filled demonstration showed how it could monitor the success – in terms of litres saved – and prevent repeated targeted and customers becoming saturated with water saving advice.
With the demonstrations over, Yorkshire Water head of information services Stephen Herndlhofer – who witnessed them all – told Utility Week the different teams produced “good nuggets” but that “combining the ideas might yield more benefit”.
He added the prototypes will feed into the company’s innovation programme before being developed and offered to its customers.
Herndlhofer added: “We could look to have some of the ideas rolled out very quickly and they could be connected to the website within a quarter.”
Hill ended the day a happy man. He had seen his vision of opening up data to the public deliver. “It’s been a great day and it’s gone very well,” he said. “We’ve got things to work with and we now have to look at what we’ve got and work out how to develop them and take them forward.”
The tea loving data-nuts among us will also rejoice at that news that Yorkshire Water is already looking at what data it can open up for its next event as it continues to seek innovative ways of hitting its efficiency targets.