KAI: Mobile app for IoT devices control
Year
Aug - Oct 2019
Client
Plus Xnergy Edge
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My Role
Design Innovation, Manager
Team
2 designers
Scope of work
Design Sprint Facilitation, Design Strategy, UX & UI Design
Business Website
https://edge.plus-solar.com.my/kai
Helped businesses save up to 20% on Max Demand Charges
"Extremely user friendly"
- KAI's mobile user feedback
Monitor & manage energy usage in real time
Background
Value adding to SOURCE ecosystem (energy performance management system) which made energy data visible to the eyes of building owners.
The brief
To design a mobile app to help users to take real-time actions to response to managing building energy better. The mobile app is aim to collect all smart devices in the building to provide analytical data for building energy optimisation.
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My responsibilities
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Proposed a 4-days Design Sprint to align what are the focus features to be released as first version with all collaborating departments
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Prototyping to final UI design development with the assistance of a junior designer
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Design QA for releasing
Design Sprint
Firstly, I had an internal alignment with the product owner, also the decider to define the goal for holding a design sprint:
The Goal
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To discover users pain points and key features for the product
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To include team members' ownership in product development (hardware engineers, designers & developers)
The Process
Adopting the Design Spring 2.0 Method, the following activities were carried out to kick start the project.
1. Define the Challenge
2. Solution, User Test Flow & Storyboarding
3. Prototyping
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4. User Testing
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1. Define the Challenge
Based on user persona, we used the customer journey to guide the scope of design sprint. The pain reliever is also the goal of the design sprint were set to achieve savings for the building.
1.1 User Persona​
Mr. Tan
Business Owner of Cold Storage Warehouse
57, Male
Goal
To keep OPEX as low as possible - energy consumption aspects:
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To reduce Maximum Demand Charges
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To control machines remotely (on/off), so that manpower can be reduced at the premises
Behaviour & Attitude
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Open to new ideas; need simple interactions; learning new technologies to help his business
Pain Points
High energy cost imposed by the national energy provider on industrial users for high energy consumption during peak hours
Image: On user journey mapping, "Use & Goal" were used to direct the following process - user test flow
2. Solution Sketch, User Flow & Storyboarding
2.1 Solution Sketch
Image: My solution sketch was selected as the main direction for design development
Image: Every participant to understand all solution sketch and to cast heat map vote.
2.2 User Test Flow
Below is the voting outcome for user test flow, approved by the decider (product owner) that will determined the prototype design.
4. User Testing
User testing were done remotely and in-person. On the end of 3rd day of design sprint, I led to construct user testing questions based on usability - ease of use, satisfaction and effectiveness to accomplish tasks, by a role-play scenario.
4.1 Insights
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Ease of use:
68/100
Overall Experience:
2.8/5
Users feedback was quite easy to navigate within the (prototype) app, understood the info provided for devices
There are more features could be handy, however it seem there are more potentials to make full use of this app.
4.2 Conclusion
A few perspectives were observed based on the testers' functional role:​
01
Functionality
Operation & Maintenance
Need features for team collaboration, eg. share actions or alert on Whatsapp, generate report, reminders to reverse actions
02
User Acquisition Strategy
Sales / Business Development
Free to use app. Need to lower the barrier for users to adopt the app, and introduce to other business.
03
Ecosystem Stickiness
Senior Management
KAI seems to have a disconnected relationship to the SOURCE ecosystem. This is a product strategy issue.
Image: the record of questions and testers responses on a whiteboard for design sprint post-mortem studies.
4.3 Reflection
All aspects raised by the user testers are critical and worth to review. These insights provided long term product strategies, and comprehensiveness of the app as a pain relieve tool for users.
Besides, one of the features - Zone, create categorise or classification of smart devices was not tested - a follow up planning should be done moving onwards.
The real-user was not invited to the testing, it is possibly we were not able to identity the top priority of users. This could be a great fall-back for solving the real problem.
Design Solutions (UX & UI)
After gathering all insights from the prototype, the user flow for the entire app was the top priority to define. The team has decide to launch this app as a MVP for one goal -
To to provide convenience for machines scheduling and overriding purposes.
User flow
To address the usability or ease of use issue (68/100) during prototype. User flow was created to ensure steps for each tasks are as simple as 5 steps. One of the example is "Create a Zone":
3-Step user flow on creating zone feature that involves minimum 4 taps.
Convenience for the users
Based on the goal, the UI design effort pays a great deal of attention to how to help user to take quick actions.
Overview of Building Data
To view all crucial data on the first screen after the app is launched - most concerned info for building owner.
Building data, and connected devices (IoT) info are designed into two tabs.
The colour of the ring percentage chart
Informed with percentage - to indicate the level of alarm (the closer to the limit, the more alarming the colour will turn into, i.e. from green - yellow - orange - red).
On/Off Toggle Buttons
Quick toggle buttons are provided for quick actions, because usually the managers are busy, and alarms are urgent.
Schedule icon
It is necessary to see which machines are whether or not on schedule. To assist decision making on putting machines back on schedule.
Daily / Weekly Schedule option
Convenience for planning based on day or week.
Running current time
The moving red line indicates current time. It is to assist the eyes of users to glance the lineup of machines are scheduled / on-going active.
Individual Machine
To view devices info, settings, and energy data in greater details, tap on the lines by referring to its label (naming of devices)
Product Owner, Ryan
Started off the project with design sprint was definitely a time, costs, and process saver. The process from ideation to execution had much clarity, and smoother than previous experience.
The outcome of the product turned out to be a greater value product than its initial requirements.
Stakeholders Review
KAI User, Business Owner of Tan Kian Huat Fishery
SOURCE (KAI) has helped my business to save up to 20% of maximum demand with their monitoring system, which is crucial during the current economy condition. Its easy to use and extremely user friendly, best of all – its affordable. The solution has helped me to monitor & manage the energy usage of my premise, and with the obtained data, it enables me to better distribute & plan my energy usage.
UIUX Designer, Junhoe
Tiffany successfully guided the design team towards a clear design goal. Under good design management, she carried strong design thinking, and led design innovation team, technical & engineering team to undergo the design sprint process. Tiffany taught me a lot of user interface, user experience knowledge when we were working on project “Kai”. She as my design manager was able to use design to help selling the idea and concept to the clients and partners with a lot of credibility; and that built confidence for her design team.
