Vertu (Copy) — Zena Corda

Vertu, redefining smartness in the “Home”

THE CHALLENGE

Current smart products are designed with values of convenience and efficiency in mind. This thesis explores new forms of interactions that we can have in our life with smart devices.

THE OUTCOME

An exploration and an attempt to design connected technologies with a virtue based approach to design experiences that are supportive to growth at home

COURSE

Master thesis project

TEAM

Individual project

Master Thesis Pitch

Watch My Master thesis Project pitch, A 3 minute Video that gives you an over view of the full project Vertu, redefining “Smartness" in the home.

The Proposal

Vertu,
A Virtuous Vision for the Home

“Vertu” is a fictitious company that makes products designed to promote virtuous living. Their main goal with their products is to enable their customers to be reflective and make virtuous choices for themselves and society. They want to make products that are focused on making people better versions of themselves. To respond to society’s growing need, Vertu launched a series of the first few virtue-based products

Clima

It is an integrated kitchen system that helps them make responsible food choices. Clima enables them to understand their climate impact and enables them to visualise their CO2 emissions to maintain a balanced kitchen habitat. It consists of an App and a monitoring unit.

Clima has an interface that visualises the users’ consumption pattern in a relatable way to make the ambiguity of their consumption patterns understandable. It tracks the families food consumption based on sustainable food practices viz, eating locally sourced foods, cutting down on meat and dairy, monitoring food waste etc

Through the Clima App, users can set a monthly CO2 budget for their family. Clima can also recommend a budget based on their location and number of family members.

Clima also enables them to know different farms nearby, to purchase local and support their business as well

Users can use the Clima app to scan their groceries and find foods that are climate friendy and fit their climate budget

Incase they exceed their budget. Clima also suggests various actions they can take if they want to rebalance their clima

Interaction modes

Clima’s home monitoring unit helps users visualise their progress, if they are within their budget or not, Clima’s leaves dry up and shrivle if they are not in their budget and bloom with flowers if they are doing well

Clima Visualises their food and consumption behaviours as foliage, the more you exceed your budget your Clima deteriorates

If your are within your CO2 budget your Clima blooms

2. Sova

‘Sova’ is an AI-based reflective bedtime experience fostering discipline by creating a desire to take better care of ourselves. It consists of an Lamp and an App

With Sova as the sun goes down and it’s closer to bed time the home atmosphere changes, lights dim down suggesting that the household should wind up with their tasks

The Sova lamp is a visualisation of your sleep hygiene habits. Here it is really dim as the users sleep hygiene is poor thus urging the user to go to bed

Your Sova aura becomes brighter the more you maintain your sleep hygiene

Sova visualises your energy and recommends that the user recharge their Sova aura as it is quite dim

The approach

Is it Smart or Automation?, Products designed for efficiency

During the initial phase of the project this is a question that I kept asking. As smart devices today are designed on the principles convenience and efficiency. They are programmed devices that

Research activities

There were 2 parallels that I was trying to uncover through this project, “The home and Smartness". In order to understand the space used a variety of research methods.
- I conducted a survey to understand how the smart device is percieve
- I used fictions story probes to understand peoples relationships with their smart devices
- Interviews with other experts working with connected technology to help understand and explore the space