"Moen approached us with an idea for an innovative smart shower that gives the user complete control of temperature, outlets and elapsed shower time.

The first step was understanding user needs. We spoke with over 30 users to understand behavior and needs associated with shower usage and routines. Once we had an understanding of what people wanted with their shower experience, we dove into design concepts, sketching out design ideas for how the physical and digital product would look and interact with the user. We even created a mockup of a shower in our research labs, complete with showerhead, and invited users to experience the app and in-shower controller. We conducted many rounds of rapid user research on a variety of early ideas – learning as we went.

Through close collaboration with Moen’s Innovation, IT, Marketing, and Industrial Design Teams we designed an entire ecosystem. This included an iOS and Android app along with the hardware user interface a user interacts with in the shower. One of the challenges of this projects was to develop an interface that was intuitive enough to be used by someone who might be half asleep or has their eyes closed when shampooing. All of this presented in a way that is an exciting and modern reflection of the smart home.

The final product allows a user to wake up and turn on the shower from their phone with the shower knowing their personal preferences (temperature, etc). The shower will heat up to the desired temperature and then pause until you arrive, which helps decrease water waste. Once in the shower, users can restart the flow of water with the U by Moen shower controller on the shower wall and then enjoy taking the perfect shower. There is also functionality to set a timer, so you can keep an eye on how long you are staying in the shower. The system accepts dozens of presets, so the whole family can enjoy their personalized, perfect shower. In January 2017 Moen released the U by Moen™ shower at CES to rave r

Our work with Moen to create a completely new concept for the connected home, through a user-centered process, is a clear demonstration of the power of UX. With the fully connected home becoming more of a reality every day, the user experience for IoT products is is the differentiator. Users expect intuitive products with simple onboarding and user-friendly controls. Through UX strategy, research, design, and development we brought Moen’s idea into reality by creating a product that users are excited and delighted to use.