Outcome

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Pulse App

An intuitive smart home app for Indian middle-class urban households based on user-centric research.

EzLiving smart home app is designed for an Indian middle-class urban home. This app lets user help to control everything at home with a single system just with one tap on smartphone. From easily changing lighting according to user mood, accessing main door locks from anywhere, accessing windows and curtains, watching and monitoring your pet’s activities in the house, and so on. This seems fascinating but all of these are now solved with the help of different smart home devices catering to each need. During HCI short course, I got an opportunity to ideate and conceptualize an entire smart home application. This project describes my user experience design process journey and understanding from the outcomes.

Role

UX Designer

Responsibilities

UI Design, Prototype Testing

Tool

Illustrator, Photoshop, Invision, Zeplin

Duration

UX Designer

The Problem

I then explored following questions:

‍1) How will people book the meal daily/ weekly, conference room, find other employees contact information, broadcasting messages?

What are people trying to accomplish?

How can the app's user interface and experience be tailored to meet the diverse needs and preferences of employees across different roles and departments?

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2) How might we enhance the current experience and streamline these processes?

How can we consolidate these tasks into a centralized and user-friendly platform?

How can we improve the efficiency and convenience?

How can we bring new value to employees by introducing features or capabilities they may not have realized they needed?

Solution

A user-friendly Pulse app that makes it more accessible to all the GSLAB employees. Bring all tasks together in the app, making tasks quicker with smart fill-ins and one-tap actions. Introduce new ways to interact, like voice commands. Keep making it better by listening to employee feedback and looking at usage data to add helpful new features. Follow design best practices.

Solution

Research Methods

To truly understand the personal experiences and needs, we approached the process with empathy and care.

Contextual Inquiry

Affitnity Mapping

Contextual Inquiry

Through in-depth interviews with 12 individuals aged 18-61, primarily from middle and low-income backgrounds with joint family, we gained invaluable insights. This contextual inquiry allowed us to articulate the pain points, needs, and requirements of the users with greater clarity, paving the way for designing meaningful solutions.

Competitor Interviews & User Reviews

We conducted three additional competitor interviews to learn how participants felt about our competitor's products. Also pouring over public user reviews and sorted that into our data sets.

Affinity Mapping

We conducted affinity mapping activity to get the key insights from the interview data

Result

Increased Electricity Load

Attitude People tend to forget switching off the lights, fan and Ac in their bedroom if not using or their are lazy to switch it off while leaving.

Harsh Environment Climate goes extreme in India. During summers the weather tend to become so hot that it becomes unbearable to survive without AC. During winter it becomes so cold such that geysers and room warmers consume major part of the electricity bill.

Daily Climatic and Noise Issues

Early Morning Issues People sleep gets disturbed on morning due to sunlights which enters the room. Some people wants to give a good start of the day by listening to music rather than getting up by alarm.

Night Issues People wake up at night for routine activity and they need to go near the entryway to access light or fans as the electricity socket situated there.

During Noise Their sleep get disturbed because of external noises and sometime the noises of TV or music played by family members.

Humidity, Temperature and air freshness imbalance in room

Humidity / Temp. Sometimes rooms has imbalance of humidity and temperature because of improper ventilation management, or in monsoon and more amount of people in a room.

Smell / Fragrance After eating food, or smell of a food cooked in kitchen can filled up the other rooms.

Window Issues

Seasons People wants to close or open the window automatically as per the weather outside and this should happen on a button click.

Power Cut People want the window to be open automatically during power cut.

Curtains / Mosquito net Window or curtain should avoid the mosquitoes or any foreign element to enter the the window.

Covid related Personalization

Events People sometimes wants to organize small get together in the room. They expect the room ambience to the good look and feel.

Room customization Dng pandemic people tend to workout, read, work, eat from same room only. So they want to adjust the room according to the requirements.

Adoption Issues

Comfort As the interviews are mostly from a middle class family, they don’t have deep pockets to invest in the iOT solutions.

Mental Block All the family members are not tech savvy to change the mindset to have automatic solutions for the manual problem.

Persona

Early research pointed towards one user group we needed to consider during design phases:

Middle class joint family. Instead of standard persona creation, We used a different method for persona creation that is a video story.

Increased Electricity Load

Attitude People tend to forget switching off the lights, fan and Ac in their bedroom if not using or their are lazy to switch it off while leaving.

Daily Climatic and Noise Issues

Night Issues People wake up at night for routine activity and they need to go near the entryway to access light or fans as the electricity socket situated there.

During Noise Their sleep get disturbed because of external noises and sometime the noises of TV or music played by family members.

Humidity, Temperature and air freshness imbalance in room

Humidity / Temp. Sometimes rooms has imbalance of humidity and temperature because of improper ventilation management, or in monsoon and more amount of people in a room.

Smell / Fragrance After eating food, or smell of a food cooked in kitchen can filled up the other rooms.

Window Issues

Seasons People wants to close or open the window automatically as per the weather outside and this should happen on a button click.

Power Cut People want the window to be open automatically during power cut.

Curtains / Mosquito net Window or curtain should avoid the mosquitoes or any foreign element to enter the the window.

Covid related Personalization

Events People sometimes wants to organize small get together in the room. They expect the room ambience to the good look and feel.

Room customization Dng pandemic people tend to workout, read, work, eat from same room only. So they want to adjust the room according to the requirements.

Adoption Issues

Comfort As the interviews are mostly from a middle class family, they don’t have deep pockets to invest in the iOT solutions.

Mental Block All the family members are not tech savvy to change the mindset to have automatic solutions for the manual problem.

Goals

We all want our homes to be comfortable, functional spaces that adapt to our unique lifestyles. That's why this app is designed with target user in mind - putting control, customization, and automation at fingertips.

These six primary goals of this mobile iOS app design serve to improve middle class family experience with IOT technology and make living environment truly personal.

Accessibility

Large buttons and high contrast for easy visibility

Voice control option

Follow accessibility guidelines (contrast, text size, layout)

Customization

Modular setup process to add components gradually

Visual representation (e.g., bedroom layout) to customize setup

Personalization

Intuitive controls (sliders, dials) for temperature, humidity, lighting, fans

Save personalized presets for different environments/activities

Context-aware Automation

Scheduling interface for automating tasks (open curtains, turn on lights)

Integration with environmental sensors for real-time automation

Location-based automation (turn off lights when leaving)

Room Mode

Dedicated section with visual representations for different modes (work, relaxation, exercise)

Customize and save preferred settings for each mode

Quick-access menu or widget for easy mode switching

Privacy and Security

RFID or biometric authentication for secure access

Remote lock/unlock bedroom door from the app

Guest access controls for temporary access

EzLiving is a culmination of meticulous research, seamless teamwork, and a shared passion for enhancing the home automation experience for middle-class Indian families.

The final designs represent a thoughtful blend of insights, creativity, and a deep understanding of user needs, crafted to simplify and elevate daily living.

Future we think

Add Alexa/Google Home enhancements for the elderly people at home.

We also plan to use ML based solutions. Such that it can observe pattern and automatically help them next time.

It will alert or make feedback sounds when someone will interact the room.

Add AR/VR solutions to the existing product.