The Ask: To create a water leak detector that works both with a smart phone app, and has an audible alarm.
Team Composition: ID phase – Design Director, Design Manager, Senior Industrial Designer. Interaction Phase – Senior UX, Senior iOS developer.
My Roles: Lead Industrial Designer, Lead Interaction Designer, Lead Visual Designer
Phases: Initial industrial design including working with ODMs on feasibility and tooling (hardware and firmware concerns). Interaction and visual design of Leak detector “card.” Unboxing and installation user testing.
Project Length: 3 months for ID, 1 month for Interaction Design
Challenges: Keeping the overall form as small as possible, making it water resistant, making the siren loud enough to be heard while in the attic or in the basement.
Learnings: This was a great chance for me to see how the different timelines of ID and Interaction can create churn and force decisions. Since the ID was done before the interaction design, even though I was doing both phases, I had to design around the physical limitations of the product with software crutches. The feedback wasn’t as immediate or as helpful as it should have been since the hardware was so focused on power savings.
Early Explorations explored how to best package the 3 AA batteries, board, and other components. The final design uses the TPU base to seal the device and incorporates the piezo speaker body into the upper clamshell. This efficiency created a tighter package with fewer parts.
As the interaction designer, I was asked to design the on-boarding flow and in-app experience. I was working within the visual language of the Lyric app, but needed to create the first bluetooth flow that allowed for home-kit and android installation. This installation flow was designed to allow it to be templatized and used for all installation flows.
Visual design exploration of the in-app experience.
Alert States
Red Lines for development
Final ID and App design
