Utility Application

Project Summary

Purpose

Academic & Personal

Roles

Research | Design | Prototyping

Date

January 2019

Why

This project was completed for a prototyping course while working toward a graduate certificate in human-computer interaction. The assignment focused on redesigning an old device created by Audiovox called the Home Base.

What

The original Home Base was designed to be an interactive white board where household members could write notes, record audio messages, upload pictures to a LCD screen, and attach items to the magnetic frame. The device was meant to help household members better organize their lives.

Requirements

The professor left the project very open-ended only stipulating that the redesigned Home Base should:

Have a physical form factor
Leverage new technology
Facilitate communication between members of a household

Our role as designers began in the ideation phase of the design process in order to maximize time brainstorming, sketching and prototyping. The final deliverable was a low fidelity interactive prototype exploring a few user flows.

The PROCESS

1. Understanding & Defining the Problem

Because this project was heavily focused on idea generation and prototyping techniques time spent defining the user, their needs, and problems was abbreviated. I investigated topics like how smart tech is used in the home, the availability of utility data, and pain points encountered around utility costs. I found that energy and utility consumption was an issue that virtually every home and apartment dweller deals with and many struggle to track, budget, and pay for these bills.

More specifically, research showed that

Many users struggle to accurately budget for utilities
Lack of detailed data makes it difficult for users to reduce costs in specific and intentional ways
Manual tracking is generally required to get an estimate of how bills change month-to-month and season-to-season
Nearly a third of households in the United States have reported trouble paying their energy bills according to the Energy Information Administration

These findings show that there is potential to improve user's awareness, experiences, and behaviors around utility usage.

Problem Statement: Users need an accessible and accurate way to access their utility data in order to properly budget, reduce costs, and improve communication about their consumption.

2. Ideation

Brainstorming & Sketching

I began brainstorming by listing out several possible functions, features, and use cases based on researched user needs and pain points. I also sketched options for the product's form factor, user interface, and data presentation. To fully explore an idea, I sketched up to 10 variations of a specific concept. At this stage, I was focused on generating a high volume of ideas that could be later reduced and refined.

Device form factor sketches and potential product features

Storyboards

Two storyboards were created to better understand when, where, and how users might interact with the Home Base.

This situation follows a persona named John who wishes to use the Home Base to compare his utility consumption to his brother. After seeing that he is ranked first in his household for the lowest overall utility consumption he looks up how he ranked for each month in the year 2019.

Lessons learned

A better understanding of the types of data a user might be interested in accessing within the Home Base
Ways in which household members might interact with each other - in this case through comparison and friendly competition

In the second situation, a persona named Cindy is cooking in her kitchen and gets curious about how much her kitchen appliances are contributing to her electric bill. The Home Base lets her know that kitchen appliances account for 32% of her most recent electric bill. She then asks for that percentage converted to a monetary amount.

Lessons learned

Where someone might use the Home Base and what activities could spur a user to interact with the device - in this case it was cooking
A possible method of interaction with the device- in this situation the user relies on voice commands because her hands are tied up with another task

3. Product Requirements

After creating and refining several sketched concepts, reviewing user research, and considering possible use cases of the device I landed on three requirements to guide decisions when creating the prototypes.

Users should be able to view their utility usage data in a simple and accurate manner
The application should help users to better understand the costs associated with various utility categories and appliances
The application should allow for the comparison of usage data between household members in order to facilitate communication around utilities

4. Physical & Paper Prototypes

Physical Prototype

To better replicate a realistic experience of the Home Base a physical prototype was created. I chose to test a design that was portable, lightweight, able to process multiple user inputs and accommodating for individuals with visual or motor disabilities. A sleeve was created on the physical prototype so that the paper prototype could slide into the screen space. This feature was used while testing the paper prototype.

Other features of the form factor include

A touch screen for user input
A rotating dial and center button for additional user input with support for screen readers
An wired power adapter that charges the devices and allows for cordless use
A built-in stand to support upright viewing on surfaces
A speaker that wraps around the top of the device for voice input and audio output

Paper Prototype

The paper prototype included low fidelity sketches outlining a few key user flows through the application. After creating a profile and logging in, a user will enter the home screen where they will be presented with options to view their usage data or compare their usage data. Both sections contain various options for drilling down into specific data visualizations and stats.

Navigation options are presented in a menu that is anchored to the bottom of the screen. Here users can quickly return home, change settings, get help and return to the previous screen.

The "pre-paper prototype", which helped to establish the base layout of each screen and visualize a user's flow through the two main areas of the application. At this stage, I realized that some content could be further segmented in order to reduce the overall density of information on each screen.

Home screen displaying the two main branches of the app

Main screen displayed when the electric category is selected from the home screen

Viewing a year's electric bill across each month

Electric costs broken down per day over the course of a month

A detailed view of overall heating consumption per month over a given year and by heating type in the current month

A user's profile view after entering the comparison branch of the app

5. Testing

Test Overview

The paper prototype was tested with two evaluators. Both evaluators owned and regularly used smart devices in their homes and were interested in reducing their utility bills.

Testing involved

A task analysis consisting of three tasks
A think aloud protocol, which was performed as the evaluators moved through the task analysis
Follow up questions to better clarify certain moments during the task analyisis

The task analysis was evaluated on a pass/fail basis and time measures were not collected so that participants could provide their thought processes, emotions and insights for the think aloud protocol.

Results & Insights

Both participants were successful in completing all three of the tasks and comments were recorded during the think aloud protocol. Some of the key findings are listed below.

Pros

Users appreciated the consistent navigation menu
User input methods felt familiar to the participants because they mimicked mobile and tablet devices they owned
The participants generally found the presentation of usage data to be useful and clear

Pain points

The evaluators were confused when trying to identifying the goal of some sections because of a lack of descriptive labeling
Some of the selectable elements of the application did not visually communicate their selectable/tap-able nature
Some of the graphs could be better labeled
In general, evaluators wanted more opportunities to customize and filter the data provided
A lack of consistency between dashboards hurt learnability for both evaluators

6. Low Fidelity Interactive Prototype

User feedback from testing the paper prototype was used to create an interactive clickable prototype. The interactive prototype was created with a slide share software called Storyline. Storyline is similar to PowerPoint, but includes support for variables and triggers which were used to add the interactive aspects of the prototype. While more detail was added to the interface compared to the paper prototype I kept the visual style simple and focused on the layout, content, and flow of the experience.

Changes implemented based on testing

Graphs were better labeled with percentages and dollar amounts to better inform users about the data
Selectable sections were given additional borders and visual cues as well as instructions to inform the user of the purpose
In the digital prototype, the leaderboard was better labeled to make it clear that additional listed users represented family members in the household
On the ‘Compare Your Consumption’ section of the homepage, color coded category breakdowns were added to the bar graphs under each household member’s name. This provided users more information without having to move through more screens.
The yearly comparison chart on Kristen’s utility usage page was simplified in order to more quickly view rankings each month. A new section was also added that contains the net total consumption for the year. Evaluators noted that they would like to track their yearly rank/consumption in addition to each month.

Home screen displaying the two main branches of the app

Main screen displayed when the electric category is selected from the home screen

Viewing a year's electric bill across each month

Electric costs broken down per day over the course of a month

A detailed view of overall heating consumption per month over a given year and by heating type in the current month

A user's profile view after entering the comparison branch of the app

Final Thoughts & Lessons Learned

Wins

I'm proud of the way I translated a concrete problem statement into ideation and eventually product requirements. I continuously returned to the requirements to keep the design moving in a direction that was focused on user needs.
I'm proud of the interactivity I was able to achieve with a software that wasn't designed for prototyping. Getting creative and using what I had available at the time has made me appreciate tools like Sketch and Adobe XD.

Lessons learned

Applying an iterative approach to sketching was valuable in landing at the best possible version of an idea
As the project progressed, I realized how useful conducting competitive analyses into products that focus on data visualization design could be
I better understood the value and time-saving nature of "pre-prototyping" a user flow through sketching and rough wire framing

Next steps

Engage in more research to learn what other functions and features of the application could assist in lower utility usage
Conduct competitive analyses to learn from industry leaders in product data visualization
Explore various user flows and build out a full site map of the application to better guide design in future iterations
Complete a second round of testing with a larger sample of evaluators and use the data to create an updated interactive prototype. For the third iteration, I would likely create the prototype in Adobe XD and explore more interactivity and a higher fidelity UI.

Limitations

Because the project was focused on sketching and prototyping, user research and data analysis was abbreviated
Time constraints didn't allow for the creation of user flows and a clearly defined information architecture
A single round of testing with a small sample size of evaluators provided useful but limited data