KIMO Energy

Overview

KIMO Energy: Smart Energy Saving is a great app for the little Saver in us. Smart KIMO Energy learns your patterns and energy usage and makes use of the build-in geolocation tracker of Android Wear and Apple devices to automatically detect unnecessary energy waste and saves your hard-earned money. This product offers apps for iOS, Apple Watch, Android, and Android Wear.

Problem

How do you help someone to save on something nobody really wants to think about, ever. Energy usage is such a topic, we all use it every day, week, month, year, but c’mon do you have any idea how much you actually need and what it cost to have your heating running all day because you can’t be bothered to worry about such things. Well, you are not alone! but just knowing how and when to save won’t help anyone either, and changing your patterns and routine is definitely not the solution. What about a system that adapts to your needs and behavior, something that saves your hard-earned cash by the push of a button or even less. Such technology will be available for any Android and IOS device and we believe wearable are the front-runners for our systems as it is always just a tap away.

IT’S NOT THE SIZE THAT MATTERS

I’ll be honest, designing for wearable devices is challenging at times and requires quality over quality— Even better so, this suite our personal view and since we are not going for easy, we didn’t think twice about our decision and spent more time on the concept development. In a perfect world, you could simply go on with your day, pick apples from trees and make money by the tap of a button. But since we are not there just yet. Guts’Neues 2019! most technology still ask us for quite a bit of engagement. Our technology will learn your patterns, monitor your energy usage at home and make, with your permission, smart adjustment as it sees fit. That kinda sounds like technology you have heard of, you are not wrong. We certainly didn’t focus on reinventing the wheel, we focused on filling potholes. Our system encourages the user only to take action when encountered with situations out of the norm, like the one time too many the lights were left or the window was left open again. Your furnace probably powered through it and you didn’t even notice but it adds to costs you wouldn’t expect!

DATA THAT COUNTS

We spent some time getting a better understanding of Industry standards, reviewed existing technology and searching solutions for difficulties we ran into during concept development. We held meetings with collaborators and project managers to discuss our User and Brand Identity. We analyzed competitor products, similar technologies; and designs on the market which helped to identify the direction we needed to go. Before jumping into the low fidelity wireframe development, we conducted short research and created a user journey map to help us with the process, problems and expectations users might have and provided more insights about the emotional connection to technology, knowledge about energy, and desire for saving money.

THE ART OF SKETCHING

Orienting on the user journey map, we created sketches, which were later used as napkins, and wireframes starting from low fidelity to high fidelity which allowed our team to variate and rework ideas. We also analyzed products from unrelated industries that offer similar features and layout designs. We combined ideas, compared collected data and refined concepts ideas to create a new design.

LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAME

The main goal of our concept was to keep the user flow to a minimum and include only the features that are absolutely necessary to complete the task the app is designed for. We started off with 4 screens and two actions which presents the user only two options and very few distracting details and information.

MEDIUM FIDELITY WIREFRAME

For early user testing purposes, we quickly moved on to a medium-fidelity wireframe prototype and started user testing to receive feedback that will give us more understanding about the task flow, functionality as well as design layout. We were also able to uncover difficulties and confusion occurred during the testings for the end-user.

FUNCTIONALITY WRAPPED IN PRETTY SCREENS

Settling on the product’s functionality and with all the data collected during user tests and meetings with all collaborators involved, our team started to build out the design. We collect components, color, and typography that represents our brand identity. Building the High Fidelity Wireframe turned out to be more challenging as expected. Communicating the message and information to the user needed to be short but extremely effective due to the low retail Android and IOS wearables offer. The high fidelity prototype helped us in further user testings it gave us valuable feedback for the finalization of the product.

FINAL PRODUCT

Wearables are only the front-runner of our system, Phone and tablets update will be available as well and include more functionality for the user to maximize energy savings