Last year our CEO wanted to move Ubiquiti into the smart home space. I had worked on several smart home projects before joining Ubiquiti, and knew how crowded that space was. I didn’t think it was a good idea, because I felt it would water down our brand and main value prop trying to squeeze in where we weren’t a natural fit, but I was open to being wrong.

MY ROLES

Project Leadership
Ideation
Framework Design
UX Design
UI Design
Visual Direction

Determine whether Ubiquiti should move into the smart home space.

Rapid, low-cost prototypes to discover the killer value proposition.

I set out to discover what our competitive advantages might be in smart homes. Our UniFi line is already designed to be a one-stop command unit for indoor internet networks, so I thought we might be able to exploit that and create a smart home universal control panel that could differentiate us. Working with my team of designers, we put together a series of rapid, low-cost click-through prototypes detailing the user journey in different scenarios to discover the killer value proposition.

I quickly established a basic architecture.

Dashboard

Dashboard is context-aware and surfaces the most used Elements, Backdrops and Rooms at this time of day.

Elements

Elements are devices. This view shows all of the elements on the home network.

Rooms

Rooms are groups of Elements.

Backdrops

Groups of Elements with presets that work together on a single tap.

I worked out basic functionality and novel features such as quick actions.

Elements screen features one-touch quick controls. Icons indicate on/off state of the Element.

Temperature Down

Light Hue

Themes

Volume

Blinds Open

Worked through basic functionality of Rooms and Backdrops.

Access a Room

Step 01

Step 02

Step 03

Step 01

Step 02

Step 03

Step 04

Step 01

List of all Element types on the network.

Step 02

Select Lights and Windows to create a new backdrop.

Step 03

The various lights and smart window Elements on the network are displayed.

Step 04

Select specific lights and smart windows to create a new backdrop.

Step 05

Aggregated controls for selected Elements.

Step 06

Set control settings for the new Backdrop.

Step 07

Name the new Backdrop.

Step 08

New Backdrop added.

Although we came up with some good ideas and a few novel concepts, such as unique main screen quick actions, and modular controls for backdrops, it quickly became apparent that we did not have enough to justify the development costs and potential watering down of the Ubiquiti brand with a heavy investment there.

I presented the work to our CEO, who decided to pivot based on this info and refocus on the basics of the UniFi line with only incremental smart home features to be added over time. We saved a ton of time and resources in the long run.