I don’t know how my cell phone works, but I know that I’ll get what I need when I go into that big shiny white store. The person helping me asks me questions about what I need to do, if I take a lot of photos, or if I watch movies with my phone. This is common sense selling, but it hasn’t been part of the consumer solar market. There’s all this talk about kilowatts and panel efficiency and deal-squashing upfront costs. But a sustainable living store in Austin called Treehouse is turning that around by giving customers what they need, in plain English. Treehouse also handles financing in the familiar way most of us buy cars: with low- or no-interest loans. By taking the tech and the hassle out of the equation, they help customers get to the important stuff: living more sustainably and using renewable energy. They’re setting a customer-first example that I bet we’ll start seeing with a lot of other green-tech companies. If you’re in a tech innovation space, how could you make your offering simpler to connect with more customers?