Prototype Pictures - Lights Menu

Here's the pictures of the prototype lights menu.

Prototype Research – Automated Lighting.

An automatic lighting system has many advantages. Firstly, it removes the need for the person to have to physically move to turn the lights off. In the video clip of Ethyl, one of our personas, we can see that she finds physical movement difficult. The second clip shows how an automatic lighting system would improve the process for her. Based on this, it is clear that a user interface is required. When thinking about the functions required, I decided that the actual button to take the user into the menu had to be clear and obvious. For this reason, I decided to use a large picture of a light bulb. The first menu the user sees gives the option of all lights on or off. I decided to do this because turning off all the lights and night and switching them on when it gets dark, are probably the most difficult tasks physically because they involve moving from room to room. The system would probably be most useful in these two situations.

I decided to have a confirmation message when the user opts to turn all lights off. I did this because I thought it might be quite frightening if this was selected by accident and the user was left in complete darkness. The confirmation message reduces the chance of this occurring without significantly complicating the process.

Also on the first menu, I decided to include a “choose room” button and a “main menu” button. The “main menu” button takes the user back to the overall main menu rather than the lighting control menu.

The “choose room” menu gives the user the chance to turn all the lights on or off in each room. Again when selecting lights off for a particular room, there will be a confirmation message.

The main concern for this particular prototype is the design of the user interface. Specifically, the colours and fonts used as well as the size of the text. I propose that the buttons are large with a black background and white text in a clear font that is not italic. I then aim to test this prototype on our persona to confirm these design decisions and modify them as necessary.