Electricity production and consumption have contributed to almost 31.3% of the total pollution in the US. Additionally, studies indicate that 35% of home energy consumption in the US is wasted. Thus, we decided to take up electricity wastage as our core problem.

Framing the problem
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“ How might we design a solution for people to easily manage and track their electricity consumption so that they can consume energy efficiently and reduce their spending habits? ”
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The Problem

In order to solve the key problems that we discovered during our research, we propose our solution that is an mobile application, IMENCO. It stands for "Impactful Energy Consumption".

With the help of IMENCO, our users can cut down on electricity consumption and wastage, therefore reducing the harmful impact on the environment. The way this can be accomplished is by providing users with the means to monitor and schedule individual appliance usage, limits their energy intake, smart controls to remotely regulate their appliances, and recommendations to optimise their energy consumption.
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The Solution

Skip to the Final Product

To understand the problem, we gathered and analyzed the data first-hand through quantitative and qualitative analysis. The primary research helped us in understanding the complexities of the problem and its impact on the individuals by collecting data directly from the potential users.

We used three methods to conduct the primary research: 
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Survey : ‍

‍In order to uncover the underlying causes of the issues by learning about potential users' behavior and attitudes regarding the issue, we developed a set of closed-ended questions to pose to them.
We reached out to university students who are living in shared apartment's and local residents, and received 50 plus responses.

Key insights of the survey are :‍

Understanding the User & the Problem

User Interviews : ‍

‍Through the interviews we got a more comprehensive understanding of the problem by obtaining users’ perspectives and thus gained insights on generating ideas and solutions to the problem. We reached out to 12 participants out of which 4 were local residents and 8 were university students. Additionally, we observed multiple individuals at their homes to determine the user scenarios.

Literature Review
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Starting with secondary research, we read multiple research papers and articles on various topics relating to our problem space, like electricity consumption, carbon emissions, the influence of smart devices, electricity wastage, and so on. Here are some of our key findings:

Competitive Analysis‍

From the survey results 79.2% of the users who have a smart home setting see little to no difference on their electricity bill.
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Therefore we did a comparative research of existing applications with comparable functionalities in order to spot the gaps, such as Google Home, Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, and HomePod.

The majority of them are centered on the main goal of remotely monitoring and managing household appliances, and the majority of them were developed with devices that were a part of their system in mind. So we identified many places where we could improve our solution and genuinely solve our core problem.

The Gap

Key Findings from the User Research

Affinity Mapping

We organized all the information we got from the interviews and field observations into several categories and looked for commonalities and threads that might inspire thoughts for the following ideation phase.

We identified 3 target users the clueless sustainable, the lazy lads, and the worrier.

The User Persona

And based on our understanding of our users we created two user personas.
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‍‍We used three brainstorming techniques to come up with all the ideas that could potentially solve our problem. So we divided the brainstorming into three phases.

The Ideation

After the third phase, we classified the ideas based on their similarities and began to analyze the ideas in order to assess their feasibility, effectiveness, and practicality. After that we individually ranked the top five solutions. Based on our rankings, we chose three ideas and decided to combine them to create our product.

After defining our objectives based on the three ideas, we determined the tasks that the user would need to do in order to achieve the goals. Next, using the Golden Path approach, we broke the task into steps that the user may follow to complete it and tried to map out the steps by connecting the dots. After some discussion and iterations, the user flow was finalized.
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Based on the user flow we created our information architecture. Which serves as the foundation upon which the product is built.

The Information Architecture

Wireframes

Get a look of all the wireframes Here

After we designed our initial prototype we conducted an internal evaluation as we evaluated our prototype through heuristic evaluations individually based on Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristic principles which offered us unique perspectives along with new flows in the app. We identified multiple usability issues.

Following that, we recruited 12 participants, and conducted a think-aloud session with them to identify the issues that they encountered while using our app and to better understand their approach and thought processes.
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Let's talk about some of the most important takeaways from the user testing and how we incorporated them into the final prototype.

The Evaluation

We achieved a 42% increase in task completion rate during the final round of user testing compared to our initial prototype.

What ' We ' could have done better

Therefore, I went ahead and began working on those issues and conducted one last iteration on the final product design.

We would continue to do a few rounds of user testing on our current prototype to get further input. We attempted to eliminate the majority of the usability difficulties that were in prior prototype versions, but, there is still a lot of work to be done. In terms of the project's future scope, we selected three design directions that we would want to investigate and include in this product in the future.

First, identify individual users in each home and record and compute their appliance consumption. As a result, knowing the precise quantity of power consumed by each person may assist them in splitting their electricity costs in a better way.

Second, we want the app to be interoperable with other smart devices, such as smartwatches, and to offer a quick overview of the amount of energy used and the devices that are attached. The watch will be used to manage and control the appliances.

The third design direction is the vacation mode. When a user goes on vacation, he or she alerts the application so that it does not misinterpret the user's absence as a decrease in the amount of power utilized by the user.

The Future Scope

Implementing Accessibility
Recognizing the significance of acknowledging various user needs, I tested my designs against the WCAG 2.0 guidelines to ensure accessibility while adhering to AA standards. It entailed taking into account each user type and addressing their needs in potential product performance challenges.

Navigating Team Dynamics
Navigating diverse challenges, from project-specific issues to team dynamics, provided valuable insights. Emphasizing soft skills—communication, adaptability, and attention to detail—proved integral for successful project completion.

Learnings

Other works

Learnings

Implementing Accessibility

Recognizing the significance of acknowledging various user needs, I tested my designs against the WCAG 2.0 guidelines to ensure accessibility while adhering to AA standards. It entailed taking into account each user type and addressing their needs in potential product performance challenges.

Navigating Team Dynamics

Navigating diverse challenges, from project-specific issues to team dynamics, provided valuable insights. Emphasizing soft skills—communication, adaptability, and attention to detail—proved integral for successful project completion.

What ' We ' could have done better

Other works

Learnings

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