So I was tasked with building the first version of a smart thermostat that I named the Qivivo. The goal was to test it out and get feedback from real home owners to see what matters most to them when choosing and using a device like this.

As the lead designer and user researcher on the project, my job was to come up with a plan and get the ball rolling. I had to recruit families to participate, design what the initial app would look like on paper, specify how it should be developed, figure out who we wanted for the study, create questions to ask people, and gather insights from the research to help improve it.

We ended up getting feedback from 100 families in France. Taking that information, we were able to develop and launch a full commercial product – the Smart Qivivo Thermostat. It was a success too, as the company that created Qivivo was later acquired by another business called COMAP in 2018.

Overall it was really cool to take that first prototype out into the real world, learn directly from users, and use what we learned to create a thermostat people actually wanted to use. Quite the journey from that initial MVP!

Articles

• L’industriel Comap met la main sur Qivivo, spécialisé dans les thermostats connectés