I visited the office of Onzo on the 6th and 7th of November to catch up with Neil Tierney and to see what their team is doing. The new offices of Onzo are located in the West End in London. On Great Newport street.
I visited the office of Onzo on the 6th and 7th of November to catch up with Neil Tierney and to see what their team is doing. The new offices of Onzo are located in the West End in London. On Great Newport street.
West End - London
The project has evolved from a UK funded research project into a fast growing start up that is focussed on delivering advanced energy monitoring solutions that cross the divide between consumers, businesses and effectively aim to ‘materialise’ energy as a concept.
The fact that designers were involved with the conception and development of the company is interesting, as in effect they are realising the opportunity with a key group of stakeholders in a pretty entrepreneurial manner.
The core of the product development team is from Lightweight Medical/Element06. Neil Tierney is leading the Research and Development, whilst Brian McGuigan is leading product development and Rory Wilkinson is leading operations. There are a wide variety of disciplines from product design, engineering, web development, software development, mathematics, graphic design and then a range of companies providing expertise into the programme such as well known PA consulting.
Joel Hagan the CEO appears a key person within the team as well and obviously has an empathy with design and product development. He has also brought the necessary management experience and contacts at a senior level to make the programme work.
Inside the Onzo Office
From what I saw of the product, the interface, and the business proposition it looks like a whole new level to smart meters. It advances it into a form that provides a greater ability to see what you are using energy on and have a better understanding of how to manage it.
Design permeates the company and how it operate across the board. They seem to have a progressive fast paced culture of getting things done (with a little style).
The breadth of the project is pretty impressive, with the core managing a wide range of convergent tasks concurrently. To manage this process they have been using ‘Atern’ the agile project management technique developed by the DSDM consortium. On the DSDM site there are a wide range of resources which are available free of charge and are well worth a look through. This approach seeks to find an alternative to the deficiencies of the ‘waterfall’ approach to project management.
The team have an Atern consultant in the studio at the moment that I got some time to talk to. Keith Richards was part of the formation of Atern and was able to give me an overview of the method and the approach. I will discuss the Atern technique separately as it is a huge topic in its own right, and worthy of discussion.
I presented to the design team what we do and how we do it. Particularly around documentation and how we develop projects as Neil felt this would benefit the team. Overall, a great team, great product and great culture, that is design driven from the top.
