Overview of Smart Home Project

Project Overview
The smart home project was a group project I worked on for Human Factors in
Engineering Design. For this project I worked with Sam, Kelli, and Kenzie to conduct
background research and design a prototype. The first main issue we identified while
conducting background research was the abundance of smart products that were on the
market, while lacking the ability to consolidate features into a single application. This
resulted in one of our goals being to identify what was currently on the market, what
features were available, and how best to consolidate everything under one roof.
My first responsibility for this project was helping the group identify which smart
home products were on the market, and what would be essential for our final design. I
began by conducting an extensive search of available products from companies like Nest,
Amazon, Google, Philips and some car manufactures. I then addressed what technologies
could interact with each other and through what means. For example many Nest products
could connect with your vehicle to determine when you were coming home and adjust
climate control to the users preferences.
Secondly I helped identify which types of smart niches were most important to
our future design. As a group we decided that the main areas of focus would be security,
climate control, entertainment, and safety. This is reflected in our final design, which
consists of security cameras, safety alerts, temperature controls, lighting controls, and
entertainment system integration.
The bulk of our prototype was designed and put together by Sam and myself
using Adobe’s In Design software. This was our first time working with this software and
proved to be quite challenging. I worked with Sam to create the home layout as well as
design the control systems and menus. This design was intended to used with a tablet
interface with ideas for phone control be addressed down the road. By utilizing a tablet
interface we were able to design a larger interface that didn’t compromise clutter and
small controls. All icons and intractable objects were large in design and would hopefully
reduce accidental inputs. This would also allow a user to move through the home freely
with the control system.
In our design we did our best to group similar functions, using symbols that
would easily map to users mental models. When interacting with a feature like lighting
 Overview of Smart Home Project

the menu would bring up lighting icons across the entire home. If a user was interacting
with climate controls the menu would transition to reflect room temperatures and provide
users with a lighting hue indicating the rooms current state. Lastly in order to address
which users had what privileges we implemented admin powers that would allow the
individual in charge of the system to distribute appropriate controls to each user in the
house hold.
Unfortunately without a specialized program I am unable to provide each of you
with the working prototype. So instead the following document contains images of
different menus that were used in the prototype, and the accompanying PowerPoint can
be referenced to see part of our design process, persona development, and system
concerns. If I were to continue working on this prototype in the future I would begin by
rebuilding the prototype from the ground up. This would allow me to clean up menus,
utilize symbols that are more uniform, and address some of the chunkier interfaces. I
would even go further to conduct some user testing and utilize their feedback to further
tweak the design.
 Overview of Smart Home Project

Prototype Images

This menu is an example of our current alert system. Alerts are organized and color-coded to indicate
priority and importance.
(figure 1)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This is the main home screen of our menu, which provides user with quick access to major functions.
(Figure 2)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

The next two images showcase how the interface changes by turning lights on or off. When the lights are
on the rooms of the house will appear brighter, when the lights are turned off the interface will darken.
(Figure 3)

(Figure 4)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This image showcase how you might be presented with lights throughout the home
(Figure 5)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This menu showcases the volume controls for speakers throughout the home
(Figure 6)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

The next two images show the screen transition between locking and unlocking rooms in your home with
color feedback to support awarness
(Figure 7)

(Figure 8)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

The next two images showcase our climate control menus with colored hues to convey temperature
information to the user
(Figure 9)

(Figure 10)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This image is an example of a quick selection menu for energy use prefrences. One change that would be
made in the future is to color code each button approriatley.
(Figure 11)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This is an example of how are television controls are laid out. With channel and volume control being
avaiable in two seprate modes.
(Figure 12)
 Overview of Smart Home Project

This is an example of how are cameras viewing menu would work, and is equipped with a night vision
mode
(Figure 13)