This is a further developed verison of the Power Automation project, our design was chosen to be taken further into development as a group project. Our brief was to integrate what we had done with the branding of Flick Electric. The model for these changes were based on extensive user research, testing, background research, and more. I did this as a group project with @KalebCampbell and three other group members.
Energy is one of the critical resources we all rely on today, and for Kiwis, it’s one of the main bills that we must pay every month. Recent increases in costs of living have people looking for ways to save on their bills. With increasing population and strong opposition to nuclear power here, this is only going to become more of a problem. There is also, a strong social push for people to reduce their carbon footprint, and people are starting to realize that your carbon footprint is directly proportional to your power usage. Directly integrating a home automation system with your energy provider is a fantastic way to save on our power bills and reduce our carbon footprint.
The Flick energy app will provide this direct home automation and be a way for consumers to have more control over the way they buy electricity as well as how they use electricity. The app aims to present the users with clear and easy to understand information about electricity market prices, their personal power usage, and their carbon footprint so they can make informed decisions about their future power consumption. It will also allow users to remotely automate or adjust their appliances.
Before merging our personas, we brainstormed the most important people in which we would be wanting to represent.
We recognised a tension between trying to represent a diverse set of users and getting too stuck on 'edge cases' that do not recognise a large amount of the user base.
Looking at the individuals between our team members, we noticed that the majority of the personas created had saving money as a key motivator (above helping the environment). We decided to reflect this difference by having 3 of our personas (Marc, Jim and Susan) list their core motivation as financial, and two personas (Lisa and Trace) with an environmental core motivation.
We also noticed that among us, the majority of our personas were under 35. Again, we tried to reflect this in our merged personas by describing three personas under 35 (Marc, Susan and Trace), and two over 35 (Lisa and Jim).
Before merging our personas, we picked out five personas from our group members' contributions that would act as 'base' personas for the merge. We then went through each of the remaining personas and picked out key points that we wanted represented still. We then incorporated these points into the 'base' personas. Finally, we read through all of the personas together, and edited them to ensure they made sense with each other, and that each persona was distinct enough to give important and new information.
Marc is a 26 year old young professional living in Wellington CBD. He has recently purchased a new house and is therefore concerned about budgeting and using his money wisely...
Jim is an 70 year old pensioner, he lives with his wife Sally in a two bedroom unit in Lyall Bay. Jim has been retired for 3 years, but he used to work as an electrician. Now that him and Sally...
Susan is a 29 year old software developer. She has worked hard to develop her career, but still has a very large student loan. This weighs on her, as well as her boyfriend’s equally large loan...
Our proposed designs were all about the same project, but had a few key differences between them. Two of us designed for a mobile interface, and the other three designed a desktop website. One of us designed the app as if it was a service of Flick Electric, one of us as if it was a service of a hypothetical power company, and three of us designed the app as if it was a separate service, agnostic of the power company the user is with. All but one of us had some concept of automation in the app, i.e turning devices on and off based on various conditions. In terms of color, three of us chose blue as a primary color, and two of us chose yellow.
These differences are summarised in this gitlab:
G I T L A BAs this was a group project, the first step was to evaluate the other projects. This was to determine which ones we should bring through to further development. I used the heuristic method to evaluate the projects.
This document explains our plan for conducting a usability test during the first phase of the development of the Flick Energy App. The goals of usability testing include establishing a baseline of user performance, establishing and validating user performance measures, and identifying potential design concerns to be addressed in order to improve the efficiency, productivity, and end-user satisfaction with a particular focus on determining user ease of access and system intuitiveness.
The usability test objectives are:
This document explains our plan for conducting a usability test during the first phase of the development of the Flick Energy App. The goals of usability testing include establishing a baseline of user performance, establishing and validating user performance measures, and identifying potential design concerns to be addressed in order to improve the efficiency, productivity, and end-user satisfaction with a particular focus on determining user ease of access and system intuitiveness.
R e s u l t sHere is a video walkthrough of our final product!
I'm always looking to improve, if you have an opinion on my portfolio I would love to hear it!