A história da primeira
garrafa de gás inteligente

The story behind the first
intelligent gas bottle

In a partnership with Galp, we improved the value proposition of the new Pluma intelligent bottle and designed its entire digital experience in the Galp World app, focusing on the consumer perspective.

A pot of rice placed on the stove. Maria, aged 50, turns on the gas already thinking she will finish the bottle to make dinner. Not to worry. She has two more gas bottles at home, ready to be used. But, in order to rest easy, Maria ends up storing bottles that take up space inside her home.

The biggest challenge for those without piped gas is knowing how much gas is left in the bottles. Storing bottles, and even shaking them, are just some of the strategies for getting around the problem.

In 2021, more than 2.6 million Portuguese households used bottled gas. Almost half of it was Galp’s.

With this responsibility in mind, Galp creates a solution that promises to change the consumption of bottled gas in the Portuguese home: the first intelligent bottle. By connecting to the Galp World app, customers can now find out how much gas they have left in the bottle, whenever they want.

This is where Tangível comes in, to help breathe life into this idea, as a Galp partner in designing the interface that connects technology to people.

Why Tangível?

Tangível is a company specializing in topics involving interaction design, which is hard to find in Portugal. Furthermore, it already has a mature structure/methodology, primarily in the areas of research and UX.

Rita Pereira
Head of Digital Office, Galp

The challenge that Galp had in hand was to humanize technology. How could a physical object be connected to a digital product? And how could you make people feel like they were “looking” inside a gas bottle?

The task called for someone capable of deep insight, who could reach out to people. For this reason, Galp chose the human-centered methodology of Tangível, convinced that understanding users was one of the most important parts of bringing this idea to life.

The Tangível team, with two service designers and two UX/UI designers, joined the 50 members of Galp in this project to find out how to integrate this innovative technology into the daily routine of the Portuguese people.

1100 hours of dedication

With a challenge aimed at such an extensive audience, we began by understanding the impact that the solution could have, using a set of research and testing methods over the course of the project’s seven months.

Process and
tools

• Desk Research
• Analysis of documentation
• Competitive analysis
• Interviews
• User journey map
• Mockups
• Visual design
• Tests with users
• Contextual interviews

From the very outset, we understood the importance of putting ourselves in consumers’ shoes. So, we invested in the phases of research, definition, and ideation to build the current journey and future journey of those who will be using the new Pluma.

We traveled Portugal from north to south and from the coast to the inland to interview users of bottled gas at home, listening to them recount their experiences.

In addition to understanding these users’ reality, we analyzed the bottled gas market in Portugal. To do so, we carried out extensive comparative analyses and studied existing documentation on the topic, which gave us a broader view of the market and the business impact of this product.

Autonomy and preparedness – what is important to the Portuguese

As soon as she hooks up her last gas bottle, Maria goes to the fuel station to buy another. Since it’s close to home, she carefully rolls the bottle along the ground, which is always easier than carrying it on her back. This is the routine of many Portuguese people.

Our research revealed some interesting insights on users, which we now highlight below. Users:

keep one to six spare bottles at home;
collect bottles because they don’t know how much gas they have
transport and install bottles by themselves
are concerned about safety.

These and other findings provide strength and confidence to the concept and features of the intelligent bottle, and how it would make the Portuguese people’s lives easier.

Tangível helped us immensely in understanding how the customer interacts with the bottle. For example, an initial proposal was designed in Pluma itself, which was later reworked when we found out that customers could not understand the difference between the new Pluma and the previous one.

Rita Pereira
Head of Digital Office, Galp

In the digital component, the focus was to simplify the process of associating the app with the bottle, and the day-to-day management of gas.

The inability to foresee available gas and the need to collect bottles are solved by a simple dashboard in the startup screen, where the customer can see the percentage of gas available. Buttons are added to the dashboard to “replace” and “pair”, thereby simplifying the process of exchanging an empty bottle and installing a new one. Details such as temperature and weight offer a sense of security and comfort, which are important in this context.

The app’s screens have been designed in an iterative manner, which has streamlined validation with stakeholders and has built a more robust proposition. In the second round of tests, we used a final bottle prototype and mockups of the screens to evaluate the entire experience from start to finish.

A discovery at every step

With our findings showing the way, we moved on to the definition phase, where we identified the key points of the experience and planned the interaction flows. We mapped the current journey of consumers and identified the issues, opportunities and desires that would help build the future journey.

The future journey is divided into two main phases: the physical interaction when installing the bottle, and the digital interaction with its mobile app.

When planning touchpoints between the app and the bottle, we realized the critical importance of physical artifacts in the experience.

For instance, we would have to locate components on the bottle (e.g. QR Code) in order to associate the bottle with the app. The installation of the bottle itself affects this process. These types of findings are only possible through testing, in the laboratory or in the field, of prototypes with actual consumers.

From this stage, we obtained data to find out how to design the instruction disk that is placed on the top of the bottle and the iconography.

To ensure that all of this is easy to understand and will actually help customers install the bottle, as well as give them confidence to use the app, we validated these proposals through user testing.

A kitchen in a lab

Nothing says home like the kitchen, the place where the family gets together, and where we create memories with our parents, children, grandparents, and friends. To test the first versions of the prototype, we transformed our UXLab into a kitchen, and invited users to join us at the table.

Conducting tests with users was a challenging experience for our team, who built a kitchen set in a single day, with a generous helping of imagination. Tables were turned into counters, furniture became sinks, and sheets of paper were transformed into appliances.

In this “remodeled kitchen”, we observed how participants picked up bottles and connected hoses to reducers, and, above all, saw them feeling right at home.

We watched them perform a series of predefined tasks with the help of a moderator and an observer, and saw how they interacted with the bottle, how they installed it and how they will use the app in a real-life setting.

In the UXLab observation room, or remotely via Zoom, the Galp team observed all of this, hearing actual users talk about their experiences with a need as basic as managing power, and how they would do it with this new solution.

And this is only the beginning...

On 21 November 2022, Galp proudly unveiled the new Pluma to the Portuguese market. The positive reception of this novelty gave us fresh encouragement to keep joining forces with Galp to improve its solutions.

We relied on Tangível to revamp our digital products and to help us bring an even more scientific spin on issues involving UX/UI. We believe this will help disseminate to the entire organization how important these matters are to the goals of the sales department.

Rita Pereira
Head of Digital Office, Galp

Galp is now one of our long-term partners, and we will keep working to improve its products every day.

Based on real user data and feedback from people, we are working to develop the Galp World app according to the needs of the Portuguese people.

With Galp, we were part of a project that connected the physical with the digital to bring the first intelligent gas bottles to the homes of more than two million families.

In the faces of many users with whom we spoke, in contextual interviews, and over the course of seven months of work, we witnessed the curiosity and amazement inspired by this intelligent bottle. Intelligent, because an old problem can be solved using technology. Intelligent, because it is focused on people, their needs and desires.