OVERVIEW
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Learning Exercise to create
all in one app to control all
smart home devices
4 weeks
Axure
Illustrator
InVision
UX research, UI paper prototypes, hi-fidelity mockups,
InVision prototypes
As a three person UX/UI team, we came together with diverse backgrounds, mine in visual design, another in marketing, and another in web design. Teamwork previously for me, was based around visual thinking and thorough discussions of how to best execute visual designs to convey the feelings and the point of view we desired. Working with a team in a research capacity seemed new and foreign at first, but as we progressed it became familiar in that we were all open to discuss thoughts and feelings about our solutions and were able to come to conclusions together easily.
For this learning exercise, we had the challenge to create an interface for a fictitious platform that allows users to control all their smart home devices through a single interface. We began with research into the digital landscape of smart home devices in general. Then we set our goal to identify core user groups for smart home devices and identify what is and isn’t working with devices currently in the marketplace. We also wanted to learn about our user's behaviors and current technology usage to understand the most valuable features to include in our product.
DISCOVERY
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Collectively, our knowledge of smart home devices was lacking. We needed to research different aspects of home technology in the current market and collect articles on what user’s feelings are toward smart home tech. We examined the current market and researched six different competitors to discover what different features each app provides, the cost of each, and where there are gaps in the market our product could fill.
We conducted interviews of both potential and current users of smart home technology. We asked questions surrounding their daily life and what patterns and routines are part of it. We later delved into any opinions or feeling they have toward smart home technology. We conducted a few interviews remotely, one via google hangout. While speaking with this interviewee he showed us some of his issues with smart home tech, one being his Amazon echo listening to our conversation and turning on NPR during our interview. The tech was a fun luxury to have, but did invade his personal life. Through affinity diagramming we further synthesized our interview responses. We broke down the diverse set of answers we received to reveal numerous themes, from motivations, to goals, and pain points of the
users as a whole.
We also conducted a survey of about 40 people and asked what categories of smart home devices people were interested in. Many users chose climate control, which we attested that to the common knowledge of the nest products. We also took notice of people’s interest in pet monitoring, at 30.6% it tied with the all in one app.
FINDINGS
• Users are weary of technology infiltrating personal lives
• The lack of knowledge about smart home devices prevented users from being
comfortable with purchasing it
• Many of our users were renters and live in metropolitan areas, also the high costs, installation, and possible
invasiveness were all deterrents for users to purchase
• Those users that currently use tech in their home, believed there was a lack of necessity for the devices, that they were more of a luxury item. Users would only justify using devices for safety and protection of their loved ones, home, or animals
• Users were excited about the prospect of the tech easing their daily lives, but lack the knowledge of smart home tech since it is so new
From there we moved ahead forming a persona that embodied the importance of easing a user’s daily life. One persona was based off of protecting the home and family. We created this persona as a new dad, who already owned many smart home devices, and found it thrilling to get new gadgets. We defined our problem statement as:
Young tech savvy users need a way to manage their household, stay connected, and feel secure, but not at the expense of their privacy or causing more stress than being beneficial.
We also defined our design principles to follow throughout our process. We must remember to be a seamless part of a user's life integrating with ease and effortlessness and be dependable allowing users to trust in technology.
After more of a discussion we realized that a lot of our users were in their late twenties, early thirties, rented their apartments, and were pretty weary about spending too much on devices that are not a necessity. Our second persona embodied those findings and revealed a possible market that seemed untapped. While creating user scenarios and a journey map for this persona we began to see that market take shape. We took note about how much certain users lit up when discussing their pets and the prospect of checking in on them when they can’t be home. We decided this was a possible route to open users to the usefulness smart home tech could provide and be less invasive than other tech.
If the tech revolved around taking care of pets it could relieve the guilt of being away from home for long periods of time. The usefulness of smart home devices needed a clear emotional attractiveness for users to be willing to purchase it. It needed to be something more than just “something nice to have” in order for users to be willing to spend.
SHIFT
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After working through numerous user scenarios and stories we made a decision to shift our problem statement...pets!
Young, tech savvy pet owners need a way to comfort and care for their animal when they are away
from their household.
We moved ahead making the app solely revolve around pet care and whatever else in the home could affect the pet through combining both the ability to watch over the home environment and interacting, feeding, and monitoring their pet remotely. We created an app map that included all of the tech controls we would cover.
We created paper prototypes, ran through some user concept tests, and moved on with prototypes built in Axure. We ran user tests on prototypes and concluded that being able to check in on pets was important and with the app more users were even willing to even venture the idea of pet ownership. We pulled other key factors from those tests.
Results from concept testing
• Using the dispense a treat button was useful
• The settings for things should be as simple as possible
• The label habitat is a bit confusing
• Need a way to interact with pet via live feed, button for talking and listening
• Keep interface friendly and welcoming, rounded shapes and attractive icons
We created a visual competitive analysis of completely different competitors from our original competitive analysis during our first phase of research. We concentrated on strictly pet smart home
devices for this phase.
• Many had whimsical, childlike style
• Very bright colors and heavy font to keep things light hearted and friendly
• Some had an elevated muted color palette that fed into the luxury brand and serious pet owners reflecting reliability and credibility
We decided to move ahead with a tone that was somewhere between, in keeping with a serious tone reminiscent of being both credible and trustworthy, but still adding a light hearted inviting
sense to the interface.
We also wanted to keep with our design principles that we discussed together and follow
throughout the project.
• seamless and simple for the user to use
• to integrate perfectly into their daily lives and be completely approachable
• wanted a contemporary feel, keeping a modern, and attractive interface
With those principles in mind, I created this mood board for my hi-fidelity interface. Clean lines, minimal layout, and a concise seamless interface. Which lead to my style exploration, using teal and orange tones in different contemporary layouts.
Keeping our principles in mind, my first round of hi-fidelity screens represented this modern minimal layout. I used a muted warm blue tone and a shot of an energizing orange in thin delicate lines, including some whimsical illustrations to bring some levity to the tone.
As a team, we tested our individual styles and screens and came away with some key takeaways:
• Users were attracted to interfaces with photos and imagery of pets, because it was something they were familiar with
• Wanted scheduling of things to be simplified and very concise
• Would only reward their pet with a treat if they could see what they are doing first to provide
positive reinforcement
• Providing Google sign in seemed to be trusted source and something users would feel comfortable with
• Keeping key features live feed, ability to give a treat, meal scheduling, light access, climate access, and entertainment as well as notifications about low feeder levels or movement on the camera
Overall we found the best way forward may be to combine all of our prototypes into one because we each had features that resonated with users. We worked together to create a new logo, color scheme, and converged all of our designs into one prototype. The combination of photographic imagery, rounded buttons, thin line work, minimalist style, and a soft calming color palette to create an approachable interface, all became petpal!
We came together as a team to collaborate around the final design and help each other through our final presentation. It was quite a different path to take on pet management, perhaps slightly risky for our first concept app, but we followed where the research led us. Throughout our readings the most important part of user experience design was to follow your research. We did and we ended up somewhere
no other team went to!
