Houssian.com

A thermometer that's a thermostat! The three system states:

Concept

This concept was part of a design exercise for one of my interaction design classes. We were asked to design a thermostat, which essentially is an on/off switch with some automation built into it. Unfortunately that is not how most users see this device. When they are cold, they crank it up, when they are hot they push it down, regardless of the fact that it can only heat or cool at a set rate, and attempt, within a narrow range, to maintain a certain temperature.

We didn't try to fully change the mismatch in mental model between the installed hardware and what the user thought about it, but instead tried to give them more visual feedback about what the system was doing. Our guiding principles were simplicity, and visual appeal.

The unit is shown in approximately the actual size (may vary with screen representation). It is an LCD in the oval with a push button at the bottom, and a slider that sticks out of both sides. The universal on/off symbol is used at the bottom, lit green when on, dark when off. When cooling beads of condensation would appear to form and roll down, the ice would be animatedly floating between the set point and the current temperature, possibly dissolving an reforming, or crackign. While heating the smoke would rise up between the set and current temperature.

Process

We used personae, and cognitive walkthroughs as well as iterating on this concept several times. With two of our designes we performed user testing, including tasks, and mini-interviews.

Lessons Learned

In a limited amount of time (2 days) don't kill yourself. Make a dsign, iterate, test, iterate and test again if you can. Staying up until 2am or all night will not neccesarily make the design better. This concept would have benefited from an animated prototype made in flash. At the time I had very limited flash skills.