Automa°C: UX Case Study

Overview

Automa°C: An application to manage the energy consumption of outdated air conditioners from all franchises of a national car brand and have a positive impact on the environment while reducing unnecessary expenses in an accessible way through IoT technology.

Client Segment: Brazil's car company.

Target: Company’s franchise administrators.

Tools: Pen & Paper, Post-it Notes, Axure, Mind Meister, Zoom, Photoshop, Illustrator, Miro, Loom.

Timeline: 5 weeks

Challenge

How do stimulate energy savings as a form of positive impact on the environment and at the same time gather data to make it easier to monitor and control those actions?

Goals

1. Monitor and display in real-time information generated by all AC equipment.
2. Generate essential insights into the improvements of expenses.
3. Encourage employee participation in statistical measurement.
4. Manage basic functions of an air conditioner at each franchise through IoT technology.

Roles and Responsabilities

We work collaboratively with professionals in Brazil and Canada, with daily remote touchpoints. As a User Experience Designer Manager, I led the project from end to end with a Project Manager, who formed the bridge between the creative and technical teams.

Professionals involved in this application:

• UX Designer Manager (My role)
• UX Researcher (My role)
• User Interface Designer (My role)
• Project Manager
• Account Manager
• Software Engineer
• IoT Developer
• Web Developer
• Copywriter

Design Process

We chose to follow IDEO’s human-centered Design and Lean UX Design Thinking Process to assure that design decisions are supported by feedback.

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Validate (Repeat 4)

User interviews

To learn more about the problem space and uncover pain points from their perspectives, I reached out to my final users. Some interviews were conducted via zoom meetings, while others I conducted in-person to determine what motivates and/or discourages them from using the application and learning about their various habits.

Air conditioners contain cold-producing gasses. The disadvantage is that these substances produce strong greenhouse gases. These liquids pollute more than carbon dioxide and pollute water and soil. Liquids that should normally be kept in the unit eventually leak.

Problem statement

Pain point 1: It is difficult for users to know the maintenance schedule of each machine, which leads to numerous problems and even equipment failure due to maintenance delays.

Pain point 2: Some devices were constantly forgotten switched on, resulting in a negative impact on the environment and consequently high costs for the company itself.

Pain point 3: Analyzing the best way to engage employees in checking measurements to mitigate those extra expenses.

Feedback from meetings: What have we learned?

It's important to know that the ducts in each air conditioner, over time, collect dust and bacteria, and every time the air conditioner is turned on, both are released, and are toxic to humans. For health matters and other numerous reasons, preventive AC maintenance is very important.

• The user took 2 up to 20 days to receive the communication of any equipment failure in any of the franchise stores.
• There was a lack of incentives for employees to spontaneously check an app for the latest updates, apart from device malfunctions.
• Depending on the equipment failure, the technician would take 2 up to 4 days to exchange the part through analysis to resolve the malfunction.
• The majority of the equipment did not have the option of automatic shutdown after X hours, like some newest AC models.

After this, we identified an opportunity to work on pain point 1: “Difficulty for the user to know the maintenance time of each AC equipment”.

Key insights after conducting user interviews and app reviews

• Users didn’t find the notifications annoying. With notifications turned on, they would know the latest device updates.
• Most users had the habit of checking the weather forecast before the beginning of any big event, to adjust the temperature of certain rooms affected by sunlight.
• A majority of participants browse only the icons to stay updated quickly about what was their daily basis consuming information. If the icons grabbed their attention, they are likely to click the statistics or the “more information” section.
• The majority of them said that they see it as important to be able to customize their environment configuration, for example: add rooms, delete them, and even order them by their type of priority, for example, the total number of equipment.
• There was a demand for known in a quick view of the number of machines that were on/off per room.

Brainstorm

In a meeting with the entire project team, we looked for ideas to reduce the delay in identifying any problems with the ACs and make information clear.

After some ideas and possible ways, we thought of scheduling regular checks, with the date for the next maintenance/previous maintenance for each AC, and tracking minor problem solving, helping users not worry about equipment failures.

Furthermore, we thought to display the number of machines that were on also per franchise besides per room, so the administrator was able to get a big picture of any franchise they own along with login with company email to be able to access statistics information.

Besides, we consider creating a visual map from each franchise, displaying the location of each AC and their main point of access for maintenance.

Together with the company, we had the opportunity to think about and propose a possible solution for PainPoint 3: "Analyzing the best way to engage employees in checking measurements to mitigate those extra expenses", which would be to create incentives through gamification and bonuses, as well as awards for the franchise that excels the most in the area of energy savings and awareness of its team.

Task flow

We considered a registration of a new environment/room where the AC would be installed, but we don't consider the registration of a new franchise, where the client company will be responsible to provide this step for our user: log in with your e-mail and password.

Registration of a new AC equipment

Lo-Fi Sketches

After requirements gathering, we’ve turned those requirements into sketches. Our goal was to create a friendly layout that would meet all the project’s prerequisites. Therefore, in the draft stage, we discussed the platform’s various functionalities before prototyping low-fidelity wireframes.

Lo-fi Wireframes

After designing the navigation flows, we continued with the project by developing wireframes.

To validate the platform, we initially made a navigable wireframe to test the functionality with users.

Fig.1 On the left: Lo-Fi Wireframe made at Miro Platform/ Fig 2 On the right: One of the remote sessions of usability tests — first version (Screenshot/Loom)

Product improvements

After completing the high-fidelity mockup, we submitted the platform for testing with fifteen users, and we received two general pain points.

Here’s an overview of the results of my design changes.

Success Rate: The user succeded without struggle

→ What did we do to resolve the pain points?

• Registration with company email: We have created an email confirmation flow that was not included in the project due to execution time and has now been developed and tested.
• Shutdown configuration: Since improvements such as setting a power saving mode option or total shutdown after X hours would be part of the IoT project as a whole, we thought that this could be a simple functionality in the app, although this solution alone doesn’t necessarily resolve problems as data gathering for future configuration.
• Failures: We maintained an automatic notification of air equipment failure directly with the franchise group’s authorized maintenance team.

After conducting validation tests and iterating designs, we obtained satisfactory results.

At that time, we created version 3.0 of the prototype and then the official launch.

Takeaways

The timeline between the platform’s development and the deadline for data collection was a limiting factor. During the platform’s development, the schedule of face-to-face meetings was anticipated, which impacted the time limit for tests, which instead of a week, reduced to three days.

Therefore, the biggest challenge for this project was the timeline. With the schedule reduced by almost half in the middle of development, we had to work initially with what was essential. On the one hand, the project was delivered with agility. We identified some points that could be improved:

• Extended user testing period;
• Expansion of the awareness and participation of peers.

All of these improvement points were excellent learning opportunities for future projects. I think that dealing with a challenging situation is the best way to gain experience from improvements.

Outcomes

There has been a significant improvement based on energy savings by all franchises, where, in addition to the equipment being constantly monitored to avoid failures due to lack of maintenance, we were able to save a certain amount of R$ 8.032,50 in a month, a reduction of 10 hours of equipment left on. If this saving is maintained, it will be almost 1 million saved in just 1 year.

*The collected data from suggestions were analyzed and compiled. From a report, where we identified that information.

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