Initially before mood boarding and looking at some more abstract examples to derive inspiration from. My idea existed solely as an interactive wall with a navigation that could act as many different types of tech. Essentially a wall that could operate as a drawing pad for a child to turn into artwork, to display very artwork it could even act as a media player and a few other more relatively constrained usages.
Looking at the examples in my mood board, like Glados, the mini invisible robot idea, and definitely that Flubber concept, it's begun to take life as a more holistic and expansive concept. It now feels much more like a home OS, I dare say, than it does an interactive wall. I do still feel like if it were on idle or standby mode it would live and exist on the wall but I don't think it should be constrained to the wall. I like this idea of the control panel living there but when gestured or commanded via voice it could come to you. It could be on the wall acting as a media player so one member of the family could be watching a movie and another member could be at their desk. The person at the desk could, like I said, command via voice or gesture to it and the screen itself, the control panel, would undergo some kind of mitosis and split in two. The split half would come and travel across the room through that person at the desk for them to use at their own discretion. I love this idea; I feel like it has a lot of potential, especially design potential, and it feels really alive.
I of course want to target a specific kind of audience with this and I feel the most appropriate would be to encapsulate the entire family so this could serve everyone and it could do so simultaneously. It could offer and do different things that could range from displaying artwork to being a music control panel. It could control the temperature; it could act as a computer or smartphone. It could deliver a message, display time, anything your computer could do this can do with the new sense of mobility and tactility as well, which I think is a huge bonus and lends itself to be a unique selling point.
The modern home is full of technology and yet somehow still full of friction. Families manage their digital lives across an ever growing collection of disconnected devices, a phone here, a laptop there, a television that does not talk to either of them. None of it is designed for shared use. None of it moves with you. None of it understands that two people in the same room might need two completely different things at exactly the same time.
The smart home has made the house more responsive but it has not made it more human. Voice assistants answer questions. Thermostats learn schedules. But the experience of technology in the family home still feels like a series of individual transactions rather than something that genuinely serves the life being lived inside it.
This project starts from a simple observation. The wall is the largest surface in the home and it does almost nothing. The devices are multiplying and yet the space they occupy is shrinking. There is an opportunity here to collapse that complexity into something singular, fluid and genuinely designed around how a family actually lives, not how a product manager imagined they might
To best visualise the users for this project, I felt it would be productive to create some user personas for each member of the family, with their varying use cases for this technology.
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Noah Martin, Age 6
Noah is the reason this concept exists in its truest form. He is six years old and he does not yet understand that walls are not supposed to respond to him. He draws on everything, talks to everything and expects the world around him to be as alive as he is. In many ways he is the most demanding user of the product and also the most honest one. If it does not delight him it has failed.
His needs are simple. A surface that welcomes his imagination. A home that takes his drawings seriously. A space that feels like it belongs to him as much as it belongs to his parents. He will never read an instruction manual and he will never ask for help. The product has to be so intuitive that a six year old encounters it and simply knows what to do.
Noah is also the emotional heart of this project. The image of a child watching his drawing lift off the wall and come to life is the moment this concept was built around. Everything else serves that moment.
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Sarah Martin, Age 39
Sarah works from home three days a week in the creative industry. She is good at her job and she loves her children and most days she feels like she is failing at both simultaneously. Her home is also her office and her office is also her living room and the technology around her was not designed with that overlap in mind.
She owns a laptop, a tablet, a smart speaker and a phone. None of them talk to each other in any meaningful way. She loses twenty minutes most mornings just getting set up. She feels guilty when she is working and Noah wants her attention. She feels behind when she stops working to give it.
What Sarah needs is not more technology. She has enough of that. What she needs is technology that understands the shape of her day and works around it rather than demanding she work around it. The split screen feature was designed with her in mind. The ability to remain present and productive in the same space at the same time is her version of the product working.
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