Primary Objectives and Business Requirements

Question:

Discuss about the Interface Design on Smart Home Heating Control Panel.

The system design incorporates a control panel that facilitates the users to maintain their room temperature by implementing a sensor for sensing the present room temperature and regulating the flow of liquid (hot water), which in turn transfers the heat. In addition to that, there will be options such as hot air, steam, electric and hot water, from which the user can select the method of heating (Kumar, 2014). The user interface design includes a ‘zone heating’ mechanism that helps setting default temperatures for individual zones or sections of the house. The system can be controlled remotely and is of a comparatively small size. The user interface includes an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen that demonstrates information for the application such as current temperature captured by the heat sensor, present status of the battery, time and operating mode.

Project Scope

The project scope involves a brief description of the overall project and a detailed outline of the major objectives undertaken for the project. The heating system design will facilitate a cost effective approach to heat the rooms in cold areas (Gungor et al., 2013). It fundamentally aims to attract the consumers having comparative lower income and living in hilly and cool areas.

Project Description

The report focuses on designing a SMART home heating control panel that is utilized for maintaining the room temperature in relatively cold areas. For this purpose, the project involves a detailed approach identifying the basic requirements for the proposed system and thereby builds the control panel using suitable hardware, software and adequate power supply. Therefore, the business goal for this particular project is to facilitate an efficient and cost-effective means to maintain the room temperature for the middle-income consumers living in cooler areas (Hu & Li, 2013). The study involves developing the user interface and control panel for the SMART home heating thermostat. The proposed system can be controlled remotely and allows the users to select a number of options to choose from, each facilitating different methods for heating up their rooms.

Project Objectives

The primary objectives of project mentioned below:

• To design a cost-effective SMART home heating control panel that automatically maintains the room temperature
• To include multiple heating functions such as heating through hot air, hot water, steam and electricity
• To implement a ‘zone heating’ system that helps setting up specific temperatures for individual sections or zones in the house
• To involve an LCD display that shows the relevant information such as present battery status, time, present room temperature and operating mode details
• To incorporate a heating sensor that senses the temperature of the room and accordingly regulates the control by circulating the flow of hot fluid to transfer the heat
• To enable a remote operating approach for the thermostat control panel

Business and User Requirements

Business Requirements

The business requirements for the project are outlined below:

• The system should incorporate easily comprehendible features and functionalities so that it is able to ensure customer satisfaction
• The user interface should be designed in a way so as to incorporate all the important utilities for meeting the expectations of the customers, which in turn helps in increasing the customer base
• The design of the thermostat incorporates a high accuracy temperature sensor with an LCD panel having wireless and wired remote controlled user interface.

User Requirements

The user requirements for the proposed system are demonstrated as follows:

• The ‘look and feel’ of the user interface should be in such a way that navigation becomes easy and follows a clear manner.
• The interface should be able to display all the important and relevant information about the heating process and associated details
• The design of the control panel should be such that it does not consume a very large space on the wall and should be able to automatically sense and control the room temperature for all the individual sections or zones of the house
• The user interface should be capable of facilitating an efficient means to preset the temperatures of individual rooms or zones
• The interface should allow users to select options for heating such as hot air, hot water, steam or electric
• The user should be able to operate the system remotely
• The control panel should be easy to operate and involve a simple, clear and concise design layout of the user interface

Key Assumptions

The key assumptions made for the project development are given underneath:

• For the hardware and software requirements, appropriate authorization and license is required
• The design and development of SMART home heating control panel involves IBM PC that gives efficient methods for designing the user interface model and code the required functionalities
• The SMART home heating panel is implemented with a microcontroller microprocessor, the thermostat design includes heat high accuracy temperature sensor and a 3.4 inches LCD segment, real time clock (RTC), temperature measurement and display, timer and battery status
• There are suitable platforms available for coding with adequate memory (RAM) storage facilities
• The UI design should only allow controlling the thermostat operation designed by a specific manufacturer and therefore, should not allow compatibility with systems developed by different manufacturers.
• The system is mainly targeted towards providing a cost effective method to the consumers having relatively lower income and staying in cold climate regions
• The proposed system should only provide options for heating the room and not support any type of cooling processes
• There would be adequate as well as uninterrupted power supply to the household so as to support the system
• The performance and efficiency of the designed thermostat is typically measured by factors such as ease of use, level of easiness in navigation options, interactive functionalities as well as the range of available operations facilitating the users to easily and readily heat their rooms
• The UI (user interface) should be an intelligent touch screen, which can be operated easily and smoothly
• The system is designed keeping in mind mainly the consumers of middle income families and living in cold climate regions
• The users will only operate the system after adequately going through the user training manual so as to properly understand each of the functions and way of working
• The system is expected to provide profitability and reliability

Use Cases

The use cases are as follows:

Use Case 1: User accesses UI through Dashboard

Description	The UI dashboard contains the home section through which the functions are accessed
Example	The user can navigate to various options and settings from the home page
Actors	The user
Stakeholders	Manufacturers, consumers of the SMART home heating thermostat
Pre-conditions	The UI is usable
Post-conditions	The user navigates to other sections from the dashboard
Triggers	The user operates the UI
Flow of events	The control panel is opened The user switches on the UI to start the heating process
Business rules	The navigations are only possible through dashboard

Use Case 2: User controls room temperature

Description	The user controls the room temperature using the thermostat
Example	The user uses the UI to control the temperature of a specific room or zone
Actors	The user
Stakeholders	Manufacturers, consumers of the SMART home heating thermostat
Pre-conditions	·         The UI is usable ·         The thermostat is already installed ·         The user is able to operate the system
Post-conditions	The room temperature is changed and maintained
Triggers	The user needs to adjust the room temperature to increase heat
Flow of events	The control panel is opened The user switches on the UI to start the heating process The user adjusts the temperature settings, modifies the temperature
Business rules	Temperature settings are saved, the user can use quick control facility or utilize the zone heating system

Use Case 3: User sets up and uses Zone Heating

Description	The temperature zones are utilized
Example	The user navigates from home screen to the available profiles for zone heating facility
Actors	The user
Stakeholders	Consumers of the SMART home heating thermostat
Pre-conditions	·         The thermostat is installed ·         The user is capable of operating the UI
Post-conditions	The user can create temperature zones and enable zone heating through the profiles
Triggers	The consumer can understand the ease of use of the temperature zone profiles
Flow of events	The control panel is opened The user switches on the UI to start the heating process The user navigates to create zone profiles from Set Temperature Zone option The user uses the profiles for zone heating after creating them
Business rules	The user can only navigate to the temperature zones from the dashboard/ home screen

Design Process

The detailed process followed for the purpose of designing the present thermostat system is described as follows:

User-centered design: The UI design approach typically involves focusing on the needs of a user during the design process. The design process typically involved the following stages:

Analyze and understand user activities: At the first stage, the user activities are specifically analyzed and understood.

Produce paper-based design prototypes: The next step is outlining the basic layout of the design proposed for the user interface (Kuzlu, Pipattanasomporn & Rahman, 2012). The paper based design is made based on the identified and gathered design requirements important to the targeted users.

Use Cases

Design prototype: The system prototype is designed based on the previously chalked out paper based design prototype, keeping in adequate consideration of the required design requirements.

Evaluate design with end users: After the design prototype is developed, it is crossed checked and verified with a group of testers or users.

Interactive functionalities: During the design process, several factors are addressed that are mentioned as follows:

The user interface incorporated icons, menus and clear and concise graphics that appropriately serve the intended purpose (Rogers, Ramchurn & Jennings, 2012). The design process took care of the following factors for the UI of SMART home heating control panel:

User familiarity: The user interface incorporates user oriented terminologies and words so that it ensures sufficient user friendliness.

Recoverability: The system is designed keeping in mind that it should be easily recoverable from specific user errors (Weiss et al., 2012). For example, the user interface should incorporate undo and cancel options.

User guidance: The system includes components that provides adequate user guidance, such as help options, online manuals to correctly operate the system

Consistency: The system involves appropriate amount of consistency in terms of menus and commands for navigations, available options and formats for representation.

Execute prototype: After the prototype is designed, it is executed so as to implement the final user interface (UI) of the SMART home thermostat heating control panel UI (user interface) (Li et al., 2012).

Home Screen: The ‘Home’ screen displays the present temperature, battery status, and the current time.

Figure 1: Home Screen

Zone Heating Profiles: Individual profiles can be configured for setting temperatures for separate sections.

Figure 2:  Zone Profiles

Selecting Profiles: A random profile is selected for heating a specific zone.

Figure 3: Selection of a Profile

Time settings and temperature settings: Time and temperature configuration option

Figure 4: Time settings and temperature settings

Saving Time settings and temperature settings: The configurations are saved.

Figure 5: Saving Time settings and temperature settings

Different heating methods: Icons for the available options (hot air, hot water, steam and electricity) for selecting the method to heat rooms

Figure 6: Different heating methods

Choosing a specific option: Selecting a specific one among the available options (hot air, hot water, steam and electricity) for selecting the method to heat rooms

Figure 7: Selecting a heating option

Quick control: Automatically turns on sensor for maintaining the room temperate

Figure 8: Quick control

Enabling quick control: Switch on the quick control mode.

Figure 9: Enabling quick control

In this section, the designed system is evaluated so as to test its effectiveness and efficiency against performing the required operations (Ramchurn et al., 2012). A set of evaluation aim and methodology is set for testing the overall system against the user requirements and business objectives:

The primary aims for carrying out the system evaluation are demonstrated as follows:

• To measure the level of ease of use and functional accuracy of the individual operations facilitated by the user interface
• To identify and examine the impacts of using the finally designed user interface by the end users
• To measure and analyze the advantages that the system provides to the targeted customers
• To understand the level of consistency, user familiarity and recoverability of the designed user interface

Success criteria

The criteria set for successfully accomplishing the project are demonstrated below:

• The consumption of electricity is potentially reduced, which in turn ensures a cost-saving approach to room heating
• The individual heating options (e.g. hot water, hot air, steam or electricity) are clearly identified and can be easily used and switched as and when needed without any difficulties
• The ‘zone heating’ system essentially allows the users to easily heat the individual zones or sections of the house
• The overall user interface design ensures sufficient user friendliness and easy to operate solution
• The system meets the predefined objectives of the user interface design for the thermostat
• The design process is completed within the predefined time frame as well as within the estimated budget for the manufacturers of the SMART home heating control panel UI
• The interface should have all the functionalities and there should be no scope creep
• The end product is released after the test is carried out and tested for fixing the different issues identified during the test

Evaluation methodology

For carrying out the evaluation, the researcher team utilizes a specific set of rules and techniques for prototyping and interaction. 

User-Centered Design Process

Prototype mobile UI (user interface) was made available to be used by a group of test users who gather knowledge from the feedbacks and opinions from the users. The user experience is analyzed according to the received feedbacks (Makonin, Bartram & Popowich, 2013). In this process, the evaluation identifies the existing issues and problems in the UI design. Based on the results and outcomes of the evaluation process, necessary changes are brought into the proposed interface design.

This process typically included a questionnaire survey that asked relevant questions to the users about the presently designed UI (Yang & Newman, 2013). The entire process may be carried out more than once in order to accurately identify the errors and major areas for change.

Test audience selection and ethical considerations

It has as of now been specified that the home heating thermostat control panel manufacturers are focusing on the electronic market of cool climate regions for releasing the user interface. In this way, clients who have as of now introduced the thermostat UI in their homes were drawn closer to take an interest in the assessment procedure. The test group were chosen from gatherings of individuals who were willing to take an interest in the said evaluation program (Tsui & Chan, 2012). Other than this, it is worth mentionable that the task group did not furnish them with advantage in real money or kind. It is obviously that the characters of the members, alongside their reactions have been thought to be touchy bits of data and hence have kept up in a secured way.

Evaluation experiments

The evaluation experiments methods are described as follows:

• Using the thermostat user interface (UI) potentially increases the energy efficiency of the overall system. The experiments conducted against the amount of energy consumption thereby utilized.
• The response time for each individual function and operation were evaluated multiple numbers of times
• The test group evaluated the system by navigating through the different sections, icons and menus of the interface

Analysis methodology and procedures

The methods and procedures adopted for analyzing and evaluating the interface:

• A thorough identification process for the individual requirements of the target consumers
• A detailed identification process followed for the corresponding effective technological solutions for the identified requirements (both business and user)
• A detailed feasibility analysis and study of the project design process

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