With carefully selection of design principles, we conceived layered navigation style to assist users in different situations.

According to the results of Nielsen Evaluation, we enforced this aspects to help users quickly get started. To satisfy the needs of people with different habits in different situations, we came up with four kinds of support, and they can sometimes be combined.

Timely Guidance and Help

flexible constant

Prescription

Diagnose as well as instruction

Help mode

Only show Q&As related to the current page

Error Prevention

and Recovery

Effectiveness is the primary goal of usability. So we must try to prevent errors in advance and correct mistakes as soon as possible, so that users can achieve their goals.

Modal Dialogue

Make user focus on current task

Default settings

For new users and recovery from mess

Warning Popup

Before make irreversible changes

Primary User Focused

Reduce Functions

A distinguish feature of Agile Development is early delivery, because we could put less important functions into future iterations.

To recognize these functions, we adopted top-down method HTA. When we started from primary goal and tried to include all the requirements gathered from user analysis, some were far from main branches in the tree and some were deep in lower levels. These were regarded as non-core functions and removed from the modified task hierarchy.

108 Branches & 8 Levels

45 Branches & 4 Levels

" This virtuous cycle inspired us to come up with Homeasy.

It’s like an aircraft with advanced power system, accelerating customers in leading energy efficient life style. "

Increasingly matured Home Energy Management (HEM) technology shows a big opportunity for users to monitor energy usage.

Households’ information on energy conservation opportunities positively affects the investment on energy-efficient products.

More people are willing to invest in energy saving technology, which promotes the commercialization of new techniques.

Energy

Star

PUSH & PULL FORCE

This is a three-month design project on the course of Human-Computer Interface Design. The aim of the project is to design a household product accessible to all kinds of users, especially seniors. The main processes were building user profiles and conceiving functional framework.

At a Glance

Date & Location

Jan. - Apr. 2016

Los Angeles, CA

My Role

Team Leader

User Researcher

UX Designer

Prototyper

Sector

Home Automation System

Home Energy Management (HEM)

Team

Yan Xuan

Bixiao Yan

Sarah Brent

BACK

HOMEASY

ALWAYS BE USER-CENTERED

Motivation

Problem

Nowadays, people have much stronger awareness of energy saving. However, every year there is still about 20% energy wasted.

Why?

Cluelessness about energy performance

Study shows large bias between people's perceived and actual energy used or saved, when actual energy usage is high.

Plethora of household appliances to control

Experts say we're already weighed down by a glut of gadgets, and that we're simply throwing money away by accumulating more.

Primary objectives are to

Make information visible

Make the system and household appliances easy to control

Main goal of the project is to

help people develop an energy efficient life.

Pitch

Goal

Agile development was suitable for small team with limited time. Instead of starting with comprehensive user research, which would increase the complex of the system rapidly, we iteratively and incrementally completed user profile according to development progress .

Every outcome of our work was closely reviewed and validated under user profile. And we went back to update it, when having deeper understandings in users and product.

" The main goal and primary objectives determined the direction of our project, and all the following work was around it. "

We developed the 1st version prototype, with little consideration of Limitation Analysis, because in this way we could reduce the complexity of the system, and were able to concentrate more on the functional needs.

However, it didn't mean that we ignored the principle of "design for all". On the contrary, accessibility is always the fundamental factor in our design. We paid close attention on user's limitation when we validated our first prototype with Expert Walkthrough. It gave us more concrete ideas of how user's limitation affected accessibility. As the project progressed, we even built persona separately for senior users, so that we could conceive a systematic design solution to secure the senior's access to Homeasy.

User Limitation Analysis

Senior

(UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population)

Mainly use the device to help on saving energy, and also expect the device to be a more intelligent way for equipment control.

Often older folk (seniors) do not like learning how to use new devices.

They don’t want to invest much on such a new product, and make great change on their current equipment.

Motivation

problem

May not know how to operate electronic appliances properly (e.g. can’t distinguish sleep mode from turning off, usually only use one or two modes for some manually controlled appliances). Bad memory (e.g. sometimes forget to turn off the device, tend to forget where the remote controller is).

Knowledge

Most of them only know the basic operations for some commonly used devices such as smartphones and computers. When come up with new or complex devices, they always need some time to get used to them.

Will use it for basic electronic appliances control everyday and will check the usage record periodically. Then set the standard of energy consumption based on the suggestions given by the system.

Level of use

Learning Style

Tend to learn by memorizing steps of each tasks in the first few times and triggering long-term memory during multiple times of rehearsal.

Zigzag

Ideation

Overcome

Stakeholders were classified into groups according to the level of the interaction between them and system. The level of the interaction has two dimension, the degree of the impact of the system on them (INTEREST) and the degree of the influence they make on the system (INFLUENCE).

Based on the diagram above, we gave stakeholders in the top right section (PRIMARY USER) the most attention in HTA, while stakeholders in the top left section (SECONDARY USER) drew our attention on non-functional requirements and restrictions. Stakeholders in the bottom two sections (TERTIARY USER) were outside the system and had indirect interaction with system. So we put them aside temporarily.

" The nature of zigzag process combined user research and product development organically. "

Explore User Needs

Interview

Different from traditional customer interview, we put users in hypothetical scenes to link their needs with scenarios.

Integrate Requirements

Affinity Chart

This bottom-up method helped us determine the 2nd-level objectives of our project:

To make information visible
- To monitor the use of the energy
- To provide usage information timely and concisely
- Less efforts in perception and recognition, both visually and aurally
- Less efforts in memorization and cognition
To make the system and household appliances easy to control
- Less efforts in body movement
- To present users with a more intention-clear and less information-handling interface

Extract Requirements

Tell Stories

We extracted potential requirements with narrative sentences.

E.g. Anna gets up early at daybreak and turns on lamp, but she forgets to turn it off before leaving to work.

However, to discuss them with stakeholders, a more vivid way was needed. The online storyboard tool helped us a lot.

Scenarios

According to the results of interview, we developed a series scenarios of what the primary user wishes to do. The scenarios were listed in a table with 4 categories: Objective, Requirement, Tasks, Operations.

Here's an example.

Challenge

" Restraints are never problems. Instead they incite our creativity and challenge us to be better. "

Direct manipulation

What you see is what you get

Age Associated Memory Impairment (AAMI) affects the “fluid” memory mostly, which is exactly the type of memory that is needed for learning the use of computer. Therefore, as a product for senior users, interaction should be intuitive and hence require little learning efforts.

Intuitive Interaction

Conversing

Remote, for frequent tasks

Shortcut/hyperlinks

Look into the numbers on report

Help document

entrance is always there

Automation

Less work means fewer mistakes

Pitch

Motivation

Zigzag

Ideation

Challenge

Overcome

DESIGN FOR ALL

Design Overview

Arrangement

The total design shame consists of around 50 sheets, including main pages and pop-ups. The following wireframe images show the major arrangement patterns. The common elements are at the constant places with constant measures.

I applied the 8dp baseline grid system from MD, along with 32dp margins and the recommended keyline aspect to the new design. It helps to establish consistency and focus across the app.