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Research & Design for Smart Home App

Smart homes are an interesting technological advancement that can make people’s lives much more convenient. A Smart Home system involves the control and automation of lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and security, as well as home appliances.

Meanwhile, smartphones work as one-stop access points to control and monitor all these gadgets and gizmos. It allows you to control devices in your home from a mobile/web device anywhere in the world.

Client

Our client was a start-up from Turkey selling thermostat controllers, cameras and motion/CO2 detectors and offers free mobile app for remote management of the entire smart home system.

The start-up plans to improve the user experience of their smart device management application.

Process Highlights

Service Name

The product team consisted of a 4 UX designers.

Methodology

Qualitative and quantitative user research, wireframing, prototyping, user flows, and user testing.

Resposibility

UX designer

Project Plan:

Two weeks of research and ideation followed by prototype testing.

Challenge

A recent product survey indicated that users were dissatisfied with the app and had several designs issues. There were significant complaints regarding the user interface and interaction elements.

Distill the problems and turn them into "how might we” questions.

How might we make temperature schedules adjustment more intuitive and easier?

How might we make automation creation quicker, clearer and easier.

Research

I made both qualitative and qualitative research to identify users pain points and determine exact areas for opportunity. With the insight, I adopted an agile process to design and deliver a solution.

I went through the user reviews of the existing apps to know the actual problems the people were facing.

Research aimed to learn about how they used these devices, their motivations to use them, and their experiences creating schedules and automations.

Methods

Discussions about the product on current customer forums and social media.
One-to-one user interviews.
Usability test on the current applications.

Semi Structured interview

Interview with 12 people. This data allowed me to paint clearer picture of the issues people face with scheduling and creating automation automation.

Could you tell me about yourself (work life, living conditions, etc.) ?

How do you spend a typical weekday? Could you tell me a little bit about it?

Do you keep your house at the same temperature throughout the day? If so, which temperature works best for you?

Could you tell me about your smart thermostat usage habits (daily, weekly, cold, or hot programming)?

Could you tell us about your most recent experience with smart thermostat settings?

Could you tell us about the factors that influenced your decision to purchase a smart therm

ostat?

Which tasks would you automate if you had a smart home system?

When did you last create automation? What conditions and actions did you set?

Tell me more about this experience, please.

What devices do you use most frequently to automate processes?

I recognize that when you create automation, it can be challenging to sequence events. Can you elaborate on this for me?

When did you last alter the settings for which automation? What do you think of the experience? What adjustments would have been more convenient for you?

Do you believe that automated actions are sufficient? What other actions do you wish you could perform?

Is it easy or difficult for you to create automation using the interface? Why do you believe so?

What changes would you suggest making it more convenient for you?

Findings

These are some of the findings:

Users frequently deviate from the weekly schedule.
The user values the flexibility of weekly calendar time selection.
When adjusting the temperature, users have difficulty using the slider.
Users' weekly and daily usage requirements differ.
Multiple persons want to control thermostat settings.
Users anticipate being able to set and schedule temperatures for various rooms.
Users want to know the temperature of various sensors throughout the day.
Users frequently copy automations to multiple days.
Users employ a conditional scenario on certain days and times of the week.
Some users struggle to create a scenario (they cannot identify which devices to use to create which scenarios).
Users frequently use a single condition to turn on and off multiple devices.

When creating automation, users who have not yet added a smart device reach a dead end.

The user attempts to create scenarios that are not possible to make (Error prevention is not used in scenarios that cannot be created using conditions.)

User tries to recreates a previously created scenario.

User cannot find the condition they want to change easily.

User cannot comprehend the scenario's content based on the scenario title and visuals.

User tries to add "delay" action without selecting an to action. (no error prevention)

When creating multiple conditions, user skips the tab "When all conditions are met."

The order of conditional actions cannot be easily changed by the user.

The user cannot easily change the sequence of actions associated with a device or scenario.

Ideation

Based on discovery and research findings I came up with hypothesis to ensure product

adaptation.

The features were listed and highest impact features were listed to be included in the

wireframes.

Adding the ability to create different schedules for various sensors.

Including a conditional setup and calendar close button on the thermostat homepage.

Providing quick access to manual mode selection via the thermostat's homepage.

Not using "circular slider" in the degree setting on the thermostat homepage in order to make degree selection easier. Diving the schedule hours in to 20 minute intervals.

Adding a filtering option on the automation page.

Providing users with various automation ideas (Explore feature)

Setting up error prevention on actions to create automation that are possible.

Configuring a system in which users who select more than one condition must select "In all conditions" or "In one condition." at first.

Offering users, the option to turn multiple devices on and off from the same screen when creating a automation.

Adding a device or scenario delay after the action or device selection when creating a automation.

Displaying to users the devices that are appropriate for the condition they have chosen, and directing them to the binding screens if the device is not connected.

Preventing user errors by disabling the save button unless users enter conditions and actions on automation pages.

Displaying a warning message when a user attempts to recreate a previously created automation.

User chart

Wireframing

Based on the research findings I created low-fidelity sketches to iterates design ideas. I then created a mid-fidelity prototype in Figma. A round of usability testing with 5 people was conducted in person and via an online usability testing platform on this prototype.

Testing

After the usability testing sessions, I created issue Issue prioritization chart and re-design part that were highest in frequency.

Design System

The second iteration of the prototype was created in hi-fidelity. We introduced brand, color, curated images, illustrations, as well as refined copy and navigation items. A second round of usability testing was conducted to validate these additions and changes we made from the mid-fidelity prototype.

View All

I then conducted the second round of usability testing with the high fidelity mockup. The changes we made were validated. In comparison to mid-fi prototype, the direct completion rate improved by 18%, and time on task (ask a question in the forum) decreased by 19 seconds on average.