As the world progresses and each sector becomes more and more digital, we can utilize new technologies to help us manage our everyday lives. That’s why we wanted to create something smart for today’s smart homes. Homely is our concept smart home app for managing your home.
Our Process
Even though, the app is a concept project, we always follow our processes. Here’s all the stages we go through to create a brand new design. We begin with research and determining who are we designing for, what are their needs, goals and habits. Then, we focus on brainstorming ideas and seeing whether they fit our user persona. After we’ve established the key functionalities, we begin designing the product. From wireframes to prototypes to the final UI on each stage we try to conduct tests with target users to constantly review our ideas.
Designing For Comfort, Simplicity And Functionality
Our challenge was to create something that is both easy enough to use while still providing control over the appliances in user’s home without overwhelming them. We decided to focus on three main points to make the app as useful to its users as possible.
Target Audience
Every user has their very own habits and mental models that they apply to their everyday life. When designing products, you need to keep in mind a specific target group and their characteristics. Based on our basic desk research, we were able to determine key characteristics of our user persona, which you will see below. Those simple insights are something that can make or break the product’s success on the market. While many companies often overlook those when creating or improving their products, we believe that knowing is always better than not knowing. At least when it comes to design.
Research
After our desk research helped us determine who is our user persona, we needed to get to know them even better. We decided to use a survey to gather quantitative data about our target audience. Our goal was to get to know their habits and their thoughts on smart home appliances. Here’s our top insights:
The insights we gathered showed us an image of a tech-forward person who is not only interested in the newest devices but is also looking for them to improve their quality of life.
Style Guide
For each project we create a style guide. This makes future work easier and makes the work quicker for the development team. We believe that a style guide is extremely important, so here it is:
Key Functionalities
After we completed our research, we mapped out the functionalities that would be most important for the target user. Below, you will find the screens we designed and which features we found crucial.
Dashboard
The focal point of the Homely app is the dashboard. It was designed to provide a quick overview of the most important updates for the user.
Device Management
The app enables users to control each smart device they own, whether it’s an air conditioning device or “traditional” smart lights.
Device Groups
For easy access and management, the users can group their devices into groups. This way, they can have a separate view for each room in their home.
Usage Control
As the world becomes more and more conscious of the environmental issues, it’s important that apps like Homely help users to be more sustainable and manage their usage.
If you are interested in learning more about this project, you can visit our Behance profile for a case study or our Dribbble to see single shots and app screens. Our team is also available for other projects, you can contact us at hello@invotech.co.
