I began a lot of brainstorming at the beginning of this project, deciding what problems I wanted to solve and in what area. I then came across Smart Homes and that is where my idea starts.
My idea for Liv is based around older people and smart homes. The issues they face everyday in the home and if smart home technology could solve their daily life struggles and encourage them to live more independently in their own home.
I found that older people want to stay in their homes for as long as possible, they don't want to feel like a burden and they want to be more free in their home living.
I began with initial smart home research, looking at competitors and what is currently out there today. I made a Figjam board where I collected all of this early research.
I then moved to user research. I actually started out with some AI interviews to get some predictions for the future of this industry which was a cool activity to include in this research.
I moved onto real life interviews and surveys after that to get my target audience's thoughts and feelings about smart homes as well as their everyday age related needs and wants at home. Read more about my research on my blog site!
I completed some empathy maps and user personas for the type of people and situations that this home system could help with. This example is Jane and she is retired with MS. She has many daily home struggles as well as health struggles, so I wanted to use this as a guide to creating journey maps and therefore decided on features that this home could include.
I began with a LOT of sketching and wireframing to plan for my chosen smart devices and just a lot of thinking of what features should go in what device and how this would look.
Here is an example of the digital wireframes, here I was figuring out my layout for the iPad screens and I began testing at this stage too.
I decided to build a design system for my smart home project to ensure a cohesive, user-friendly and visually appealing experience across all interfaces and interactions. This was a super fun side project to add to my final project!
Check out the full system on here Figma- Liv Design System
I faced some challenges with what I was going to show, products wise. I wanted to show that this was an entire house experience so I had to make some decisions on what screens to design for and what features to put in them.
I also had some challenges with the AI aspect of this project, how I was going to show this and how I was going to design for this. However I enjoyed the challenges along the way and I think my solutions are great!
I decided to design screens for 3 different devices to show this as a whole home experience. The above features are available across these 3 devices.
iPad screens - Onboarding examples
iPad screens- Homepage
iPad screens- Health page
Smart Watch screen examples-
At the end of projects and you look back you want to change a lot! However without being too hard on myself, I feel like the end outcome is cool and looks how I wanted it to look! I think I did well with designing for multiple products, that was a lot of work but I love the end outcome overall. I worked really hard and tried to push myself and this idea as much as I could. I could definitely work on and better my technical skills with prototyping and Figma animation and other topics that I mention above; but I think the work I have done is great and I am proud of my achievements!I would have loved to have more time to develop the TV screens and with the watches I would have done even more screens too as I had more and more ideas to include there too.With Liv, I wanted to help old people as much as a I could with this idea and concept and encourage them to use tech to help them live at home for longer and be more comfortable and happy! And not let any age related issues stop them from doing so. This system does that and I am proud of my work this year.