The Ask: To re-skin the existing flagship 9000 WiFi Thermostat UI and ID.
Team Composition: ID Phase – Senior ID, Design Manager, Design Director. Interaction Phase – Senior UX, Junior UX, Senior Visual Design.
My Roles: Lead Industrial Designer, Lead Interaction Designer, Creative Director
Phases: Industrial design, DFM and manufacturing support, creative direction of detail design and mobile app reskin.
Project Length: 4 Weeks.
Challenges: Maintaining the existing architecture but creating a drastic change in the Thermostat UI. Keeping the existing part-count and construction for the enclosure. The thermostat is also a big seller and the app has 4.5 stars, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t alienate existing users or decrease the usability.
Learnings: This was a great project for navigating constraints and producing a quick concept that turned into a major effort for Honeywell. It really illustrated how a lean team could produce viable, and desirable designs quickly and efficiently.
The starting point was the existing WiFi 9000 thermostat. It has been in production since 2009 and was really starting to show its age.
In an attempt to reduce engineering time and thermal impact, we first examined the existing construction to start to understand the materials and assembly process.
From there we created a new ID concept that kept the same ability to customize the color for different channels as well as maintaining the same assembly process and internal components.
The UI was updated to match the new Honeywell DLS and optimized for usability and clarity.
The mobile app was also brought in as a stretch goal. The visual design was was created by Jason Tieffenaur.
To verify the changes were still usable and desirable we ran a series of user tests using the RITE method.
Final designs
