PROJECT

Hunter Douglas PowerView® App

ROLE

Lead UX Designer

SUMMARY

An app to control window shades with a swipe of a finger. Added functionality allows users to create formulas where the shades adjust themselves automatically.

No longer in the app store

CHALLENGE

At the time this hardware was in the works, it was the first of its kind. Hunter Douglas had a very simple app prototype to control the hardware. This prototype used standard UI controls for both iOS and Android. We took this opportunity to make the controls more intuitive as well as built new app features.

As the Lead UX Designer on this project, I made sure we worked closely with Hunter Douglas’s hardware team at their warehouse. It was important that we streamlined the pairing process between the phone and the shades and checked to see if there were any improvements we could make to the hardware as well. I also worked with the lead developer on the project to test and prototype multiple userflows and control styles. We planned to release the Android app first due to time and resource constraints.

RESEARCH METHODS

At the time this hardware was created it was the first of its kind. Hunter Douglas had a very simple app prototype to control the hardware. This prototype used standard UI controls for both iOS and Android. We took this opportunity to make the controls more intuitive as well as building new app features that cater to many different user scenarios.

User Interviews

Personas

Journey Mapping

Prototype Testing

PROJECT GOALS

We discovered that people wanted to be able to control the shades when they weren’t home. We also found that there were benefits to having the shades on a timer, thus the creation of “scenes”. Homes with Hunter Douglas shades were more likely to have multiple shades in a room across multiple rooms in the house. There became a need to group the shades together to make controlling a room easier and more efficient.

Create intuitive controls that work across the wide range of configurations of Hunter Douglas shade styles.

Allow groupings of shades so that users can quickly control large groups of shades at a time (rooms).

Create settings that can control the users shades based off of time, temperature and mood.

Final Controls

CONTROL STYLES

We explored many control styles while we were prototyping and testing. Ultimately, we decided on a simpler style of control because it was more comfortable for our main demographic which skewed older.

It was also important to make sure we provided visual feedback as to how their shades were currently set so they could see how to adjust them since they could use the app when they were not home to adjust the shades.

Control Explorations

Time Setting: could consist of shades opening at 6am to wake the family up

Temperature Setting: when the temperature reaches 72 degrees, the shades will close to conserve the cool air in the house

Mood Setting: a mood setting could consist of a “movie” setting where the shades can lower or darken to create an ambiance for enjoying movies

SHADE GROUPINGS

The main demographic averaged 6.5 Hunter Douglas shades per household, with many of those being in the same room. We added a grouping feature so that users could control a whole room of shades at once instead of individually.

FINAL THOUGHTS

One of the biggest challenges with Hunter Douglas’s shades is that there are many different control styles and some window shades combined multiple control styles. User testing was cruicial to developing a control that was intuitive and would work across a variety of these shades especially since a home could have a number of different shades installed.