UX/UI Design
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of smart home technology, as many people have been working and schooling from home, and looking for ways to remotely control and monitor their homes. Moreover, gas prices are increasing all over the world, saving energy has never been more important in our century. Luckily, with the growth of technology, it might be easier than ever.
A unified home energy saving app can possibly solve a variety of problems regarding consumption:
Automation: Sometimes, people forget to turn off appliances when they are not in use. An app can help with that and also add schedules with pre-defined behavioural events.
Lack of visibility in energy usage: Many people are not aware of how much energy they are using. An app can provide statistics on energy consumption, including breakdown by room or device.
Hard to control consumption: It can be difficult for users to manually control all of the devices and appliances in their home that consume energy. A unified solution could add as an all-in-one remote control.
Automation: Sometimes, people forget to turn off appliances when they are not in use. An app can help with that and also add schedules with pre-defined behavioural events.
According to a survey conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, people who use home energy apps tend to be more aware of their energy usage and more likely to take steps to reduce it. The survey found that people who use home energy apps are more likely to have installed energy-efficient appliances and to have made changes to their home to reduce energy consumption. They are also more likely to be interested in learning more about renewable energy and to be more aware of the impact of their energy usage on the environment.
Lets user control their heating / cooling and create thermostat & AC presets.
Pauses heating for a period of time if device detects sudden drop in temperature.
Lets user control their devices’ integrated smart functions in one place. For example:
Overall statistics of energy usage.
Create predefined sequences of device-specific functions. For example:
Lets user know about their charging devices’ percentage and remaining time.
After planning the key functions, I created an information architecture with the most needful endpoints.
After examining the topic and carefully planning the basic functions, I started creating the low-fidelity wireframe. This sneak peek includes the most essential branches, so I purposely left out some errors & emtpy states.
