DTE Energy App

Design prototyping and rendering solutions for over 15,000 unique avatar variations

DTE Energy partnered with Vectorform to build an ecosystem around smart meter adoption; providing direct benefit to energy customers with realtime data, along with deeper insights and gamification of efficiency. Vectorform developed both the hardware (Energy Bridge) and software (DTE Insight) in-house, where I was part of both the design team and the lead technical artist. I was able to play a key role in helping prototype, design, build, and deploy assets for the massive energy efficiency platform for online and mobile app experiences.

Prototyping tools

To prove out some of the data visualisation concepts being pitched in early stages of the project, I built a number of prototypes for the design team. Quartz Composer was used to develop and test in realtime, including a functional demo of the primary graphing engine with networked controls for live presentation demos using TouchOSC.

These tools helped validate ideas and define visuals, which were further refined and finalised by the design and development teams, and implemented in the final application experience.

Virtual energy community

Part of the DTE Insight experience was adding gamification to the process of lowering energy bills. Users could complete efficiency challenges and compete against past electrical usage or local averages to level up a custom house that lived in their account. Based on five selectable architectural styles, the avatars gave a concrete way to show progress through the gamification of saving energy.

Achieving a new level unlocks new 3D assets and customisable colours for a truly individualised identity. The avatars were designed to be used both in app and online with realtime rendering or pre-rendered icons, showing off how well users, and communities, were saving electricity and living more efficiently.

During tech art development, custom tools were built to test and validate the personalisation of each housing style and colour palette using realtime 3D rendering and dynamically generated texture variations.

Processing system

Ideally we would have been able to render the textures dynamically using masks encoded in RGB channels, but due to a number of limiting factors (from texture aliasing to low-end device performance issues), it was determined that every texture variation would have to be rendered individually and streamed as-needed from an online cache.

Working with developer Jordan Savage, we developed a rendering system that would generate textures; taking the encoded masks, colour libraries, and 3D models, then stepping through every possible combination and rendering the results for both realtime 3D textures and final rendered icons with lighting and effects. The assets were used throughout the apps

Results

The Insight app was DTE Energy's most successful energy optimisation program. Through their partnership with Vectorform, they spun off a new joint venture, Powerley. Specialising in smart home energy solutions, the new company has continued to develop the product and now partners with many other state utilities to bring better insights and .

Incredibly, more than a decade later, the app still uses some of the original visuals I created, all with the help of this custom pipeline.