Nest Case Study
From Creation to Integration
A speculative case study.
Who is Nest?
Nest is...
Nest is focused on making simple, human, and delightful things. That’s how they’re creating the thoughtful home: A home that takes care of the people inside it and the world around it.
Goals and Scope
Originally my team and I were prompted to create a brand new app that is meant to exist along side the current nest app in order to aide our users in saving energy and money as well as visualize their expenditure. What we did was conduct a survey first to see what our users preferred (a second app or integration). After synthesizing the data from the survey (74% in favor of app integration) we then pitched the idea to integrate instead of create.
Timeline
Two Weeks: December 18th, 2017 - January 2nd, 2018
The Team
My team consisted of 3 individuals, each with their own roles and expertise:
- Felix Tsai: UX Researcher and Designer
- Pauline S. McNaughton: UI Designer
- Chad Cates: Project Manager
My responsibilities included but were not limited to:
- Craft qualitative and quantitative research scripts/materials
- Synthesizing research data
- Translate findings into visual deliverables
- Aid in creating wireframes and mock-ups
- Design a product presentation for stakeholders and managers
Process
1. Research: Digging into It
We wanted to find out some information on our users. These included:
- How our users think
- What their main problems are
- Data for Personas
- What is the most cost and time efficient way to address the user's problems
- To grow empathy towards our users that will carry into our solutions
User's Pain Points
We conducted surveys to see what our user's pain points are.
- Not enough visualization of energy usage
- No budgeting tools to help users save energy
- No budgeting tools to help users save money
- Not enough alerts for energy usage spikes
User's Opinions on Existing Nest App
Should the Two Apps Integrate
"There needs to be tools that can help me budget my spending and visualize it as well." - User
"I wished there were ways for me to learn more about energy saving habits and best practices." - User
Research on the Market
We first conducted a Heuristic evaluation on ourself to see how we could do better. What we discovered was we did well across the board and but failed to offer energy saving tools.
This was also something our main competitors lacked as well and we can improve on this.
Here we also conducted a Competitive and Comparative Analysis. We pinpointed the major issues being:
- Not enough tools to save money and energy
- No impact from your usage on Nest
- No integration of historical usage
- Better accuracy on home/away mode
2. Synthesize: What Does it All Mean?
To begin this we started with card sorting. We wanted to get inside the minds of the user's to see how they make sense of the app and it's features.
Site Map
Next we constructed a site map from our synthesized data. The site map helps guide us in our process.
This serves two purposes:
- Structure for integration
- Validates because it's user driven data
Meet Joshua!
Joshua will help us on our journey of integration as he encompasses what it is our users want.
3. Ideate: What Will Help Our Users the Best?
Starting in our ideation stage we begin to create solutions in which we felt best addressed the users' issues. We collectively discussed each team members idea and picked what we liked best and incorporated these ideas in our low fidelity wireframes. This way all voices are heard and no idea is left behind.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
We created these low fidelity wireframes and tested them. Using that information we moved forward and created our medium fidelity wireframes with updated features and designs based off user input.
4. Testing: Taking the Ideas for a Spin
User Flow and Task Scenarios
User flows and task scenarios are used in conjunction to see if users can find and use our features without our aid.
We constructed three different task scenarios in order to fully test our integrated features.
These included:
- Setting your Eco temperature and temperature limits
- Use the budget feature to set a limit for this month
- Check your usage for a certain date when you had guests over and see how much energy you used
Discoveries
Some key discoveries we got were:
- Users needed help navigating new features
- Once discovered new features were intuitive
- The new feature integration excelled in addressing user pain points
From this we created a tutorial feature to introduce both old and new users to our integrated features.
5. Iterate: Back to the Drawing Board
After conducting our usability tests we went back to look at what user's felt needed improvements and what could be more intuitive. We took the new data and synthesized it so that when the next iteration of user tests get conducted it will reflect the concerns and issues that came up.
Medium Fidelity Wireframes
Synthesizing the Data (Again)
We took another look after our medium fidelity testing and made one more round of adjustments based off user inputs. Some insights we gathered was:
- Users wanted to be able to navigate screens easily.
- Users preferred to see temperature budgeting features together with history of usage.
- Users wanted monthly, weekly, and daily scheduling capabilities.
The Stages of Ideation and Reiteration
Ideal User Flows
We crafted wire flows for visual representation of what our users would run through.
Prototype
We used the same user tasks that we used for our medium fidelity to make sure that our feature integration works. Our user tasks take the user through all the new features.
Try it Yourself!
6. Takeaways: What We Got Right and What's Next
What we learned from our prototype was that with the inclusion of the tutorial our users were able to easily navigate the app and became much more familiar quickly.
Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the measure of success a product has. Here are a few KPIs from our Nest Integration:
- 100% of our users were successful in using our new features (with tutorial)
- 80% of our users felt the new features addressed their problems with the current existing app
- Our users enjoyed the education options provided in the app
- Our users reacted positively to the visualization of energy usage
What's Next?
What's next is to improve some of our features that are already included in the app such as:
- Increase the accuracy of the home/away feature
- Add a double comparison function for comparing two separate instance of energy usage
- Smart home integration