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  Thermostat!™ Case study

 

TYPE OF PROJECT: Case study

TEAM: Myself

MY ROLE: UX & UI Design | Visual Design | User Research | Usability UX & UI Design | Visual Design | Analysis | Market Research | Usability | User Research

The Opportunity


PROBLEM: In this case, I had to address the issue that Andrea, a fellow GA student, had involving inconsistencies in temperature in her home. She felt that communicating to her landlord was difficult and did not know about tenant rights.

 

SOLUTION: Create a native app that allows a tenant to easily create an appointment with their landlord whenever there are temperature issues. This app would link to a thermostat installed by the landlord with a sensor that sends the information to the app. If the problem persists, and the landlord does not fix it, the app can then lead tenant to contact the NY Department of Housing and file a complaint.

The Research

 

This project was done on a one week sprint and thus the time for research was very limited. To start, I interviewed Andrea to see what her issues were with her home and then interviewed at least five other people to see how they handle a similar issue. I then consulted both an architect and an electrical engineer to see if they had recommendations for a physical solution, which would have been costly and time consuming. This informed my choice to recommend a native app that would work for both landlords and tenants.

The design

 

FIRST ITERATION: A native app that allows tenant to have multiple ways to contact Department of Housing, super, and allow tenant to take pictures of existing thermostat to send.

SECOND ITERATION: An update to the app with more streamlined features. I removed many options that in testing were deemed to be too confusing. Likewise, I wanted to emphasize the minimum viable product which was to improve communication between tenants and their landlord/management companies.

THIRD ITERATION: Brought it from a paper to a digital prototype. Cleaned up a few features to make it more user friendly.

 

Go here to see the completed prototype.

next steps

 

  • Approach the app from the landlord/management’s side.

  • Develop the Department of Housing contact option.

  • Make the prototype higher fidelity.

 

 

 

 

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