Smart home premium thermostat

Discovery & delivery, end-to-end UX/ID/UI

I led the complete design project, from ideation, discovery, and research to concept creation, validation, and design.

The project was divided into 4 phases:

Discovery and requirements collection
Concept design
Testing - validation
Development - delivery

Agile thinking was applied for each phase, every time we tested one concept (for example) we modified some details and tested it again.

The Industrial design was made in cooperation with the Design Agency PONG Design in Berlin.

Phase 1. Discovery

First hypothesis

- Sales Increase potential by introducing an Eco and a Premium Line allows us to discover and develop new products

- Without an Eco / Premium it's very hard to maintain and grow our market share due to heavy competition.

A new suite enables us to:

Improve the product, make it more desirable, and stand out from the competition.
Consider strategic opportunities like heat pump compatibility, or UFH.
Improve and maintain a high ability to innovate.

Challenge / Task

Discover and validate 2 new products: 1 Eco + 1 Premium. Based on the existing tado˚ Smart Radiator Thermostat

Design both products, Eco to be launched in 9 months, and Premium to be launched in 1.5 years

Timeline

Community research

Community Research, pain points prioritization on requests. I performed interviews with different internal stakeholders to understand their needs and hypothesis. This includes different departments like Marketing, Sales, Customer Experience, Installation, and Brand experts.

Most requested features --> Prioritise

Hardware:

Support for rechargeable batteries - all types of.
- Easy exchange of batteries
Improve, or reduce the noise of the motor
Auto calibration or trigger calibration from the device itself, and from the app.

Software:

Local schedule
Quick access for Open Window Detection for a limited time
Better temperature measurement
Reconsider subscription payments for the Premium Line

Nice to have

Hardware:

Motion sensor (impact needs to be analyzed)
Metal adapters to the valve

Software:

Apple Watch app
Radiator maintenance setting

Competitors research

Compact example of one competitor analysis. By spotting the main features and differentiators of some of our direct and indirect competitors we can detect opportunities in order to test them.

Hypothesis testing

Question 1

Is the USB rechargeable version perceived as Premium, compared to an alkaline version?

Question 2

How much do the following two display variants contribute to the "Premium" perception?

Text Display with Dialogs
Simple display with less context

To validate the hypothesis or questions that we had and define the requirements for the product, we performed two surveys with more than 1000 participants in 3 different countries (DE, UK, NL). The main purpose was to perform a preference test, but we also added some Cost Analysis and A/B Testing.

Phase 2. Design

Workshops & co-creation

I led several workshops on ideation, construction, and branding topics. Together with a small team of engineers and designers as a core team, we went from many crazy ideas to refining a hand full of best concepts

Pair words activity

The goal of this activity is to define together: where are we now and where do we want to go in the future? Images help all stakeholders visualise the intention of the words independently of their technical or design background. By doing that we all have a picture in mind of what we want to create and how far is it from the current products.

Concept ideation

Concept refinement

Phase 3. Testing

Concepts validation

We tested the three design concepts with more than 5400 participants in several countries, through surveys, interviews, and focus groups.

Features tested alone and against competitors:

- Display information

- Shape & Colour - Appearance

- General construction - layout of components

General findings:

Rechargeable battery concept is by far the most attractive feature for concepts
Both concepts were more attractive than competitors. In DE Pipe was more attractive
The pattern on the dial helps to show the interaction part, but when is too strong the impact is negative
Existing customers seem to have a different perception of the pipe concept.
The darker display is more attractive, feasibility needs to be checked.

Phase 4. Development - Delivery

Result

We started development for the pipe concept after the data gave us a confident indication that this direction was the right one for the user's perception.

We kept testing and validating minor topics (e.g display color, existing customers' perception,...) during construction with engineers.

During development, we have done many iterations on details for CMF, small hardware changes, and lots of iterations for display content.

Learnings

Teamwork is not just good, is essential to have great results!
Complete Product development takes longer than I expected! Buffers are good to plan.
Follow your intuition, but have data to back up every decision you take.
The more you test and iterate, the more your users will love your product
Hypotheses are only hypotheses, validate them as soon as possible.

I had a lot of fun doing this big project, which is still ongoing (after 2 years). I'm looking forward to the tracking and sales numbers after we launch it in 2023.