Researching and Designing a Connected Ecosystem for Your Home
Role
Lead UX/UI & Prototyping, managed junior designer, assisted research
Team
1 UX designer, 1 UI designer, 1 design strategist, 1 project manager
This project was focused on defining a future vision for Samsung to integrate A/V and IoT within their smart home ecosystem.
Our process
- Evaluate the existing players—Homekit, Alexa or Google Home to the premium experiences such as Crestron or Savant— and understand their strengths and weaknesses.
- Speak with users, architects and installers who are working with the current tech to understand the pain points and opportunity areas.
- Design a series of concepts to address uncovered pain points.
- Run a series of user interviews to test the concepts to see which resonate.
- Refine the designs into a unified experience.
Deep Ethnographic Research
We started this project by talking with 34 different users, installers and designers in their homes, offices and studios to better understand the future of connected homes.
Within the entire journey of integrating smart tech, we focused on first time use, onboarding, and ongoing use.
Through our research we uncovered three distinct opportunity areas and nine approaches to address them.
01 / Simple Setup
People need simpler and easier ways to learn their system’s capabilities. They want to be educated and excited when setting up new devices and not overwhelmed and confused.
02 / Command
Users need systems that are quick and easy to interact with, and that fit their unique living situation and device preference.
03 / Visibility
Users need to feel like they are in control of their homes in a simple, high-level view of its system and states.
Designing for real world scenarios
Setup Confidence
How might we provide effortless guidance for family members to integrate their devices into daily routines?
Voice + Visual
Utilizing the convenience of voice with the power of detailed visual information, users expect a marriage of these types of interfaces.
“Voice will be the best way, I don’t want to have to open up an app for daily control. You want to use voice because it’s most natural.” - Jens H.
Reliable Magic
Users need their technology to work flawlessly, every single time. Innovation is only rewarded when it works.
“People want it (home automation) to be simple, and to work.” - Ben R.
Proposed Features
Conversational Onboarding
Audible and visual feedback from the system provides coaching and guidance
Add New Device, Push / Pull Content
Instant recognition of new devices and connection to other household devices
Digital Coach
Proactive creation of user routines based on use.
