My role
UX/UI Designer
Collaborators
Content Writer: Sharmila Kuthunur
Packaging Design: Zhan Shi
Web Development: Sam Hart
Product Management: Jakob Wilter
Designed for
IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group
Time Frame
Nov 2021 - Jul 2022
Empower homeowners and renters to effectively monitor and safeguard their homes.
HomeSafe is an e-commerce website that sells home environment test kits. The products include water quality, mold, asbestos, paint, and hard surfaces test kits. Moreover, HomeSafe has also information about environmental testing in general, called HomeSafe Academy. We hope to educate homeowners and first-time home buyers about things to watch out for when purchasing a house.
This project will be IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group’s first business-to-consumer approach. Being a UX/UI Design Intern at the company, I collaborate and communicate with all members of the team daily and get feedback from them.
Market Research
IEH has been selling testing kits to businesses for a long time. The CEO is interested in creating a business-to-consumer company that sells similar test kits to consumers. Having this in mind, we went to HomeDepot and Ace Hardware to see what test kits are in the market now. Looking at their packaging and marketing, we saw an opportunity to create a brand that creates a more approachable atmosphere for customers. Detecting lead in your water is no longer scary. HomeSafe is here to help you.
Test kits in the market
Target Audience
Our target audience is first-time home buyers, homeowners, and parents (who care about children’s health). In addition, we plan to have a discounted price for low-income homeowners as we understand the financial difficulties for them to buy our testing kits. We strive to educate everyone to test their homes and start protecting their health.
Brand Guideline
Zhan, our packaging and graphic designer picked out the color blue and green. We wanted the color palette to be vibrant and friendly to follow that approachable look of the website and packaging design.
For font use, we decided to use Open Sans throughout the whole website.
Logo Design
We went through many iterations of logo designs. From using a drop of water to having a lock to present safety, we decided to keep it simple by creating a box imagine with windows inside, a roof that symbolizes a house, and a check at the bottom to give a sense of “verification”.
Customer Journey
To better understand how to build out the test kit shop pages, and how to ultimately lead users to the shop bundles page, I created a customer purchasing behavior diagram. Our goal is to give bundles priority, so the diagram has two arrows that show the customer will eventually navigate back to the shop bundles page.
Product Development
The team started working with the CEO and added more potential products that HomeSafe could sell. Some of the products included in HomeSafe’s product line are water, mold, surfaces, asbestos, and radon test kits. Because of my fluency in Chinese, I was the person in contact with test strip manufacturers in China and conducted market research.
Product development brainstorming
Design Concept and Wireframes
During my design research, I came across Robinhood’s website design and presented to the team. We ended up taking the approach of having an “illustration look” to soften some of the scary concepts. For example, detecting mold on your wall or lead in your water might be a scary thing, but with approachable illustrations, HomeSafe is here to support and help you.
A few pages we agreed on having are:
Home page
Shop pages (water test kit, mold test kit, asbestos test kit, hard surfaces test kit, and paint test kit, different bundle options)
HomeSafe Academy (educational page)
How it works
About page
Below is the wireframes and high-fidelity designs for some of the pages mentioned above.
home page wireframe and high-fidelity design
mold test kit shop page wireframe and high-fidelity design
HomeSafe Academy page high-fidelity design
How it works page high-fidelity design
Impact
The company is still working on this project. However, during my time there, I expanded HomeSafe’s product line to 9 testing kits by leading conceptual design. I also helped increase home environment safety awareness through education about why testing home environment is essential to a healthy lifestyle.
Reflection
What went well:
The website has a fresh look to it. It stands out from the other products in the market.
Even though there is a lot of information on this website, the organization of the information doesn’t make the website seem too crowded or overwhelming
Issues the team faces now:
Using illustrations is a good idea, but the website doesn’t look like an e-commerce website. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the product photos yet, but our future approach might be cutting down illustrations and adding more real photos on the website.