HCI – Redesign of Honeywell Thermostat Touchscreen
Class: UBC Computer Science – Introduction to HCI
Role: User-centered interface redesign, prototyping (various low-fi; Flash), user and discount testing, prototyping
Dates: Sept. 2005 – Dec. 2005
Credits: Jeff Qua, Peter Hu
Our group chose to redesign an "award-winning thermostat interface" created by Honeywell. We conducted user studies on how the original interface might be improved and found that people had trouble with everything from ambiguously labeled buttons to basic overall task completion.
We implemented a redesigned prototype in Flash and conducted user tests. We split users into two groups: SpringbokToHoneywell (S2H) and HoneywellToSpringbok (H2S). S2H tested the Springbok interface first, then the original, and vice versa for the H2S group.
We chose to split the users because we wanted to examine any transfer effects and learning that might occur in testing one interface before the other. We also made efforts to minimize aesthetic differences so that users would not be distracted by relatively unimportant details, and attempted to limit user bias by not telling them which interface belonged to which designers.
We presented our findings, and our project was awarded first place by an industry design panel, and was voted Best Overall by our classmates.