Neos

Remotely controlled street lights on the public domain for local administrations.

Period

Apr 2019 - Jun 2019

About

A small part of a bigger smart city project planned for the cities of Romania, starting in Iași, made by Urbio, a 100% Romanian group of companies, delivering integrated professional services in design, street lighting, Smart City systems & renewable energy: https://urbio-romania.ro/

Brief

Urbio had a new LED street lights infrastructure already installed in the majority of localities around the county of Iași, Romania, so they needed to put in place a smart system that would make them communicate with a server installed at the mayor's office and interact with them on a responsive platform.

- Web platform mostly for the public administration representatives who would see an overview of the lights system status and get reports on functioning schedules, maintenance done by techs and power consumption stats. 

- Mobile platform for technicians to install the system, set it up, diagnose and maintain it and even add or adjust many more smart city features in the future (temperature sensors, traffic control data, parking etc.

Left: The skeleton of one of the operating tables in the works. Right top: Table remote control. Right bottom: Servicing tool.

Research

Our initial discussions helped us gather foundational information to kick off basic research on street lighting, the smart city concept, competitors, and user personas.

Personas

We focused mainly on public administrators and service technicians.

Competitors

Looked into main local and international competitors on the market at the time.

Workshop

Building on these insights and a few initial assumptions, we facilitated a collaborative three-day workshop with back-end and front-end developers, Android developers, and the technical manager from the development team.

Lean canvas

We aligned everyone with the main problems and expectations.

Terminology index

It was a very challenging project for us as it was a new domain with a lot of unknown technical terminology, so we also clarified all the terms we found in the client documentation and others terms that appeared during our discussions.

User journey maps

After many discussions and debates, we clarified which type of users will need to do what and outlined a first draft of the different journeys each goes through.

High-level requirements

We settled on these main personas and features:

All users

- Need to see an overview of all the "switch-on points" (as they called them) on one or more localities under their administration.

- Overview - These need to be visually distinctive through symbols to show their types (node, main server, lamp, festive lights, repeater etc.) and through colours to show their status (on/off, offline, lamps dim level, alerts etc.).

George (Mayor)

- Needs to view, adjust and download relevant reports on usage and power consumption.

- Needs to set up working schedules and add festive lights.

Solution

From there, we began iterating and refining the concept map and user flows. This process led to prototype testing and the delivery of finalized assets for development.

Concept maps

We mapped and remapped the first proposal on the user journeys and how the software and hardware are connected in the field.

User flows

Out of the 4 user scenarios, here's just the main public administrator's user flow.

Sketches

We quickly sketched a few iterations of the user flows, especially the main screens depicting all the street lights and their states.

Wireframes prototype

Next were the lo-fi wireframes for the web app version, which we validated a few times and helped everyone have a clearer view of the entire process, before testing it for the first time.

Usability testing

It was done live, with a few of the real future beneficiaries of the smart street lights system, whom already had the hardware installed on their localities streets - mayors and public administrators of nearby towns and a few installers:

- We had help from some of the students at the UX Course which I was mentoring within the Informal School of IT, Iasi - they were our observation team, taking notes in another room.

- Users said it looks very appealing and up-to-date, interface is big and clear, but some not being very tech-savvy, had a higher learning curve.

- There were a lot of adjustments made along the way, to the terminology and switch-on points symbols and different types of devices.

- Some options were requested to be more obviously placed and named.