Watercare App
"RUSH's approach to working closely with us and our customers has empowered our teams to drive our digital-first strategy forward and continuously improve the customer experience."
The project
Watercare delivers reliable, safe and efficient water supply and wastewater services to 1.7 million Aucklanders. With Tamaki Makaurau’s population growing rapidly, and the increasing challenges of climate change, it’s more important than ever to find smart solutions to protect our precious water resources.
The rollout of smart water meters beginning in 2021 provided the jump off point for digital technology to enable Watercare customers to be more aware of their water usage. With access to water usage data in real-time, customers are better informed and empowered to be more water efficient.
Using a human-centred process, Watercare, in collaboration with RUSH, designed and built a native app to support and engage customers with their water data. The ultimate outcome is a user-friendly app that gives customers clear insights about their household’s water use and alerts them to spikes that could be caused by a leak.
Expertise
Product Strategy
Research
UX Design
UI Design
Prototyping
Frontend Development
Backend Development
Native Application Development
Quality Assurance & Testing
1.7 Million
Aucklanders rely on Watercare’s services
400 Million
Litres of water supplied every day by Watercare
48
Data points create a visualisation of daily usage
Follow the water
Collaborating with Watercare and their customers, RUSH’s human-centred design activities uncovered and validated the needs within self-service and detailed consumption reporting.
The discovery process alongside Watercare and their customers gave the RUSH squad a deeper understanding of the challenges being faced, the opportunities for technology to make an impact on strategic goals.
Designing for inclusion meant a broad customer discovery process in order to understand the needs of extreme or edge case users, as well as mainstream water users. Our bespoke process incorporating Lean UX and Agile delivery practices are underpinned by a shared clarity of dependencies with Watercare.
By working cohesively, we ensure we understand ongoing priorities and, most importantly, have established a culture where our teams value working together on a daily basis.
"RUSH is a valued partner who provides much more than just expertise in user experience and platform design. Through their commitment to building a genuine digital partnership, they have invested the time to truly understand our business and the challenges we face. This has allowed our teams to collaborate seamlessly, to question and challenge the status quo."
Complex systems thinking
The app workstream requires us to integrate deeply with Watercare’s back end infrastructure and data sources, turning complex water usage statistics into better and meaningful information that makes it easier for users to understand how their daily activities impact their water usage. RUSH works closely with Watercare’s ecosystem of key internal stakeholders and external vendors to deliver a complete customer experience in a seamless way.
A waterwise future
The Watercare app provides customers with insights and automated prompts to make their relationship with our most precious resource better. Users will reap all the benefits if they already have a smart meter installed, but any customer can use it to be proactive with their water usage.
Give it a go
Try the app in this clickable prototype
Interactive prototypes just like this one allow us to rapidly test and validate the digital experiences we create — de-risking the delivery and building a great foundation of insight into user behaviour.
If you're an Auckland water user, download the Watercare app below.
To try out an interactive prototype of the Watercare app, please visit this page on desktop.
Otherwise, if you're an Auckland water user, you can download the Watercare app below.
Ready to make better happen?
