Developing smart living solutions and a better living experience for families with small children.
Autumn 2019
In collaboration with YIT as part of Demola.
Team: Jarna Arra, Lakshmi BG, Arttu Kukkonen & Jan Föhl
My role was to work as a project manager and visualizer.
Process
The process followed the general design process: discovery, (insight,) ideation & prototyping, refining & packaging and delivery. The work was done closely in collaboration with the YIT representative.
The context was defined based on the background information provided by YIT. Most of their new buildings are located in urban areas. Families were seen as an interesting target group for future services.
Discovery
This phase consisted of:
- an online survey to get insights about the attitudes towards smart technology at home
- observation to better understand how people use their living environment
- benchmarking to find out the existing smart solutions and technologies used
- defining the target group
My task was to visualize the data and insights gathered (picture).
Design brief and drivers
Based on the insights gathered in the first survey, I visualised the information as a canvas to use as a tool in the ideation.
What?
Smart application integrated to an apartment: something you can buy yourself. Technology that helps YIT customers to have better daily life by their values.
These were defined based on the customer study made bye YIT and the survey results.
Target group
A family living in a growing city at a smallish apartment. This was based on the megatrend of urbanisation and insight that families are preferring cities more and more.
Design drivers
Based on the survey, three main goals for the home are:
- to feel safe
- to be able to rest
- functionality
In the survey, two most valued thing about daily life were considering about safety and saving time more free time). We chose those as drivers for the design. With those in mind we started ideating solutions.
Ideation & Prototyping
- conducting deep interviews and analysing them
- creating personas
- ideating solutions using the brainwriting method
After more research, we had five concept ideas to evaluate.
Five concept ideas
MORE ABOUT THE CONCEPTS
Pictures starting from upper left corner.
1: Renovation service
This service helps residents to carry out small renovations such as painting a wall. In a digital interface user chooses the type of renovation and is able to see the result on a 3D model of an apartment. When decisions about renovation are done, user can order the material needed for the renovation straight from the system.
2: Safety system
This system alerts residents in the case of fire or water leak. It also follows the water usage. The data gathered about water usage and safety habits may provide more affordable price from an insurance company.
3: Community services
This concept includes:
- communal grocery shopping platform
- food sharing platform
- tool sharing platform
- shared spaces
4: Smart fridge
This concept aims to make grocery shopping easier. The fridge collects data of the food inside it and user can check it from a mobile phone anywhere. The system can be connected to a digital family calendar and other family information such as diets. With this information it can give ready recipes suitable for the timetables and diets.
5: Local kiosk
This is a small local self-service shop. It is targeted for the residents in a block. People can buy snacks, ready meals and local groceries and pay it using a home key.
I visualized the five concept ideas. With the illustrations, we conducted another survey, where we asked our target group if they find ideas worth developing. We got altogether five answers, which was good since we found out that our target group is busy!
Refining & Packaging
The steps for this phase were:
- validating the concepts
- choosing the final concept
- validating the final concept
- presenting the final concept
The most interest gained a concept with a local self-service kiosk located in a block.
Prototyping and evaluation: second round
The concept still needed development. We started to prototype how the kiosk service would actually look. My task was to create physical paper prototypes of the elements in the space.
The last picture presents our evaluation session, where we explained the concept with our rapid prototype and short storyline and got feedback about it.
The final concept: Kipari self-service kiosk
Kipari is a local kiosk for the neighbourhood. Residents are able to enter and shop there with their home key (iLOQ). The electronic tag in the key is connected to their YIT+ account. They can load credit to their account using the YIT+ mobile service (that already exists).
The kiosk has locked lockers for each product and grocery delivery lockers. In the future, the lockers can be used also for other deliveries (mail) and loaning tools for the community.
The concept was first targeted to families with small children, but later in the evaluation, we found out more needs for this kind of service.
YIT+ Ruokakori digital platform
We created a demo of a digital platform where residents can for example load credit and set restrictions for shoppings. The UI and interactions are designed by me (using Adobe XD)
Why Kipari
Comparing to the normal local Kiosks, Kipari is closer and open around the clock with less staff required.
The payment system is safe and secured. Especially for families with small children, the system allows parents to control the money used each day and what children are able to buy from the kiosk.
The service is scalable and different sizes of Kipari kiosks can locate around the block.
With the Kipari service, we aim to ease the hassle around food.
