Re-designing the experience of a smart home mobile app
Overview
Background
Carrier is a HVAC company and wanted to re-design their mobile app for residential users that let them connect multiple devices from their home to control and monitor different parameters like air quality and temperature.
My role
My role was to bring fresh designs to improve the overall look and feel of the app, and create a scalable design system to accommodate ease of access to multiple devices inside the home screen, consistency of components and faster future iterations.
Problem statement
The current design is outdated and has inconsistent components because the design was updated over time in small pieces, cannot accommodate multiple smart home devices in the home screen and keep a user-friendly experience. Some users complained difficulties in finding information.
Goals & Vision
• Easy access to controls
• Improve information architecture
• Consistency and scalability
Research insights
We conducted a survey test to see if the design concept is intuitive and gather user insights on the information architecture. Most of the users found the design concept easy to use and they provided insights on what they want to see first or more frequently on the dashboard, and what are the main actions for each device type that they want to use.
Many users wanted to have access to the outdoor air quality, and weather forecast information inside the top card. For the thermostat device, they wanted to see the temperature from multiple zones and quickly set the temperature.
Design process
After we’ve had the results from the tests, I started to do some more design iterations based on what the users want to see or have access to based on the device type.
There was a lot of information needed to show to align with the users expectations and multiple actions that the users would want to take. My goal was to make the information accessible while reducing the cognitive load.
I achieved that by showing the most important information at the top level using a clean, easy to scan design, utilising gestures to reveal more info or change the type of info, and quick actions for the main actions.
Designing the new home screen
We focused on this screen because this is the core place that the users would need to have access to all the information that they need and control their devices easily.
I’ve come up with a modular solution using cards for each device and information type at the top, to facilitate a scalable design and better user experience when multiple devices were connected in the users home.
Creating a scalable design system
To ensure consistent design components and make it easy to adopt new products in the future.
Conclusion
It was an awesome project with lots of lessons learned from the process and constraints I’ve had when I was designing the new device components and home screen.
Looking back, I would include the users more and test the concepts often in order to align with the users needs better and faster.
