Home Automation System Dashboard Tablet Application Design Concepts Challenge

Welcome to Home Automation System Dashboard Tablet Application Design Concepts Challenge! This challenge is focused on creating design concepts/visual ideas to create a Tablet Application that will be used by multi-billionaires to control Home Theater using a Dashboard, although we are focusing on Home Theater only for the first designs, we need to account for all of the other home automation systems.

We are looking for you to provide design concepts and click-paths. This is the first step in planning our mobile user experience!

In this contest we are looking for DESIGN CONCEPTS on how this Tablet Application could work. What should the user see and experience when using the application?

 

Round 1

Submit your design for a Checkpoint feedback
- Dashboard.
- If you have time - please provide us with a click map for your design.
- Readme.jpg : Provide notes about your submission.
- Make sure all pages have correct flow! Use correct file numbering. (00, 01, 02, 03)

Round 2

Final Design plus Checkpoint feedback
- Dashboard.
- Home Theater.
- If you have time - please provide us with a click map for your design.
- Please for round 2 place your design inside device frames so we can have a better visualization.
- Readme.jpg: Provide notes about your submission.
- Make sure all pages have correct flow! Use correct file numbering. (00, 01, 02, 03)

Challenge Description:
The goal of this challenge is to design a mobile application that will allow users to control their Home Theaters using a Dashboard, this will be the beginning only, in the future we will add other devices to control inside the home like lighting, so keep such thing in your mind while designing the Dashboard for this challenge, so we need to account for all of the other home automation systems as well.

The client wishes to see a completely new approach to home automation in these designs. They don’t want replication of any of the big systems out there now. This is your chance to design the coolest, newest interface out there! Dont’ be afraid to show us all your ideas, no matter how crazy it may seem! Take advantage of iOS, touchscreen interactions and gestures! these users will be trained - show us something great!

We are looking for the [topcoder] design Community to help us with planning our new "user experience" (UX).

Design Guidelines:
- For the sake of the best visualization there are no branding requirements, but the design needs to be:
- Light.
- Simple.
- Clean.
- Straight forward.
- Flat, adaptive to theming.
- Fat/layered/transparent overlays.
- INNOVATIVE

The main businesses in this space are: Crestron, Control4, Savant Systems, Harman AMX. You are certainly welcome to look at these examples, but this client does not want their UI to copy or replicate these systems in any way.

Design Concept Goals:
- How should this mobile application look?
- Read the user story and decide what should the priority features be (what is the priority navigation for this user?)
- How quickly the user can find what he wants?
- The application should be easy to use.
- Think simple but effective solutions! Have fun creating this - let us know how you think it should work!
- We want this to be a MODERN application design! Icons should not be highly 3D or colorized. The app needs to be skinned down the road. We want this to feel highly customized but simple.

Screen Sizes:
- Tablet Resolution: Design for iPad Air 2 Retina Display 2048px x 1536px.

Required Screens:
1) Dashboard Page:
The dashboard will be the hub of the interface. What elements are the most important for a user to see right away? Time? Weather? Active devices or active rooms? The user uses this as a control center for their entire house. They need to have a way to access all the controls / rooms easily from this area.

Think about how we can differentiate the experience and make it more valuable for these homeowners. This needs to feel very personal and high-end for these users.

Tools
Users will have a minimum of 2, up to 10 things they can control using this system. These can include: Home Theater, Audio, Security, Thermostats, Pool/Spa, Lights, Cameras, Intercom, etc. How the user accesses these tools is up to you, and you must keep in mind that the number each user has is variable, so the design must account for that possibility.

For this contest, we are focusing only on the Home Theater portion of the app. There might be some overlap to other tools as you design this, to keep the system integrated. That’s ok!

Quick Links
Some users like to have some shortcuts to features they use over and over - where should the user see these? we need a way for the user to add/remove these as well

Weather
The system should include weather data. How will the user see/interact with this data? Is it read only? Should the user have any other interactions or suggestions based on the weather?

Intercom
All interfaces will also have Intercom capability (talk to other rooms). You do not need to show screens for this part of the interface here, but should think about how the users accesses this tool. Same as the others? Differently?

Status
Some things that the client feels may be important (but are up for your ideas!)

• The ability to turn everything off at once.
• The ability to turn off rooms one at a time (for all things, or specific things, like the TVs). How would the user access these controls easily?
• Power on/off for the entire system (do we need to see an indicator, or not?)

Rooms versus Devices
Currently most systems on the market navigate by Room. Once the user selects a room, they can pick the Tools in the room to control.

Some considerations:

• Need access to control rooms that you aren’t in - how does that transition work?
• Should the Room selection always lead? Should the navigation be by Tool? On all cases, or only certain situations?
• If there is something ON in a room, is there an easy way to see this at a glance? Does this belong on the dashboard, in a list? Some other way?

Extras
Nothing is off limits to make this system stand out. Here are some ideas. You do not need to use these, and can definitely add in your own!

• Give users the ability to use the system to leave messages to others in the house.
• Alerts / warnings (both predefined and user-defined).
• Customized messaging

2) Home Theater:
- The user needs to be able to select a Room and the option for Home Theater. There can be up to 32 different rooms, and each may or may not contain a TV/Home Theater. How these options are positioned/chosen is up to you in your main navigation scheme defined in the dashboard. Perhaps they pick the room, then Home Theater, or vice versa. Think about what would make the most sense for all of the different tools the user might have throughout their system as we want a consistent and simple experience throughout.
- When the user selects Home Theater, he will see up to 16 devices. There can be more than one of each in a room. For example, a user might have 1 TV, 4 DVRs, Roku and 2 AppleTVs. On the other hand, there might be just 1 TV and 1 DVR.

·       DVRs
·       TVs
·       AppleTVs
·       Roku
·       DirecTV
·       XBox
·       FireTV
·       BluRay
·       Projector

- The user will NOT be able to add/remove devices on their own.
- The user can add favorites like favorite channels, and can see some lists like TV channels list.
- When a user selects a device he will get a virtual remote based on the device:
---- The remote should have basic controls like play, stop, pause which are all dependent/specific to the actual device, advanced controls and the ability to add some of the advanced features into their base set.
---- The controls need to be very clean and simple.
- The controls should NOT look like a remote control! We want to update and reinvent the way the controls are and keep it consistent for all the devices. Many of the systems now have visuals that replicate a remote. We do NOT want that type of interface.
- The user should be able to add in our favorite “advanced” items in the basic screen / delete buttons.
- We need the system to be easy to use. It will not have the touch/feel of a remote. Can they use it with one hand? Two hands? What’s the best experience? How do we get users excited about our interface and not the standard remote?
- Should users be able to use the remote without looking like they might be able to do with a normal remote? How can we make this easy to adopt?

Overall Interface Notes:
- What else should be included, please suggest for us some other features.
- Some ideas we have about nice features:
---- Dim at night / screensaver.
---- Can the dashboard change at night? And then start turning on at 5am to show clock and weather, for example? How can we integrate this into your life to be useful? Google Now? Etc.

Important:
- Keep things consistent. This means all graphic styles should work together.
- All of the graphics should have a similar feel and general aesthetic appearance

Target User:
- Multi-billionaires that wants to control all aspects of their house using this home automation system.

Judging Criteria:
- How well you plan the user experience and capture your ideas visually.
- Cleanliness of your graphics and design.
- Your design should be possible to build and make sense as a mobile application.

Submission & Source Files:
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as layered PSD file, or Adobe Illustrator as a layered AI file.

Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors. We may ask you to update your design or graphics based on checkpoint feedback.