Providing temperature data and energy education to help with student’s comfort levels in classrooms.

TherMOOstat

Project Details
Internship
Role
UX Designer
Website Design
Duration
Spring Quarter (10 weeks)
Background
Do you remember sitting in a lecture hall for hours and it’s too hot and uncomfortable? Or freezing cold? This is exactly what TherMOOstat solves for. TherMOOstat is a custom-built tool for UC Davis students, staff, and faculty to send us feedback on how they think a space feels: hot, warm, comfy, chilly, or cold. For this internship, I worked to redesign an informational side module for TherMOOstat that included educational content related to the product and summarized data on the specific building.

Learning About Heating & Cooling

When I first started the internship, the only thing I knew related to heating and cooling was how to turn on my AC in my college apartment since Davis, California was a heating hazard (literally – I think I was sent 10+ emails about overheating). Besides that, I had zero knowledge on how heating and cooling worked especially on the UC Davis campus. 

My first task as an intern was to look over the existing research for TherMOOstat. I wanted to understand how heating and cooling worked on the UC Davis campus and understand the goals behind TherMOOstat and its users. Since there was a lot of unfamiliar technical information to absorb in a short amount of time, I tried to get an overall gist of the idea and prioritized the personas I was designing for.

Balancing Product & User Goals

If I had to summarize my “overall gist” from the 100+ pages of research I had to go through on my first day of the internship, it would be these two points:
👥 User Needs
Understanding TherMOOstat users played a huge role in deciding what information would be prioritized on the side module. The number one motivation for users is how hot and cold their space is.
📈 Business Needs
 On the other hand, the product goals equally played a role in the information. TherMOOstat aims to save energy through education and making students aware of this by connecting it to their comfort.
This is how I decided to prioritize information based on the two points above:

1.

User Needs:
Displaying how hot or cold
a space is

2.

Business Needs:
Educational links about heating and cooling

3.

User & Business Needs:
Factors that affect comfort

Opportunities To Improve Design

I did an audit of the existing TherMOOstat design, paying close attention to the side module, with the intent of identifying opportunities to enhance the information design to align with the personas. I also researched information design to learn about best practices when it comes to presenting data.

I wanted to make sure the side module included clear, accessible information in order to understand data or information and digest it quickly through a clear and engaging visual and explain how energy and comfort go hand in hand.
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❌

  Clear, accessible information/ Digesting information quickly

❌

Clear and engaging visual

❌

Explain how energy and comfort go hand in hand

Illustrations: Creating Engaging Visuals

Originally, I was going to scour through multiple files of existing designs for TherMOOstat to use for the side module based on my PM’s request. Until I discussed my strong illustration background with my PM and she tasked me to create my own illustrations for the module. 

For TherMOOstat users, it was really important to know how hot and cold their space was so I wanted to represent this by having some character “feel” the temperature, as if the user were currently in the graphic. 

In terms of the color choice, there was already a design system in place, where certain colors represented certain temperatures.
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Putting Everything Together

Keeping my goals in mind, I decided to create three panels that would be displayed gallery style in the side module.
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Iteration

After reviewing the final design with my PM, we went back and forth on some minor details regarding text alignment to stay cohesive with the rest of the page.
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Final Design

Project Outcome

Since this project was completed right before summer, the side module is still in development (all the interns are on vacation!). When this project gets launched, the majority of students will benefit since users want to know how hot or cold their space is through TherMOOstat.
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Reflection & Takeaways

🌡️

Potentially a heating and cooling professional??:
I may have exaggerated a little but I came into this internship knowing nothing about Facilities Management and their work. However, it shook me to how much I learned about it through meetings with my PM and going through the educational content that was connected with TherMOOstat. It makes me more confident in the future, knowing that I can easily adapt to any project even with a lack of knowledge.
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🎓

Appreciation for UC Davis:
As I worked for the school instead of only being a student, I saw things from a different perspective. While being a student for four years, I was never really involved in campus culture in terms of the work that UC Davis was doing. My goal was just to get my degree and graduate in four years. Just within Facilities Management alone, I worked on TherMOOstat which aimed to save energy so I can’t imagine what other departments on campus are doing to aid sustainability. I’m glad that I was able to have an impact on such a huge educational institution.
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