With the development of smart homes entering the Chinese market for nearly 20 years, from the initial high-end positioning to now it has begun to spread into the masses of households.

EZVIZ, as a smart home security brand, uses intelligent hardware, Internet cloud services, artificial intelligence (AI), and robots interconnected the home automation, solving home security by the smart device.

The problem we got from the client was designing a smart TV version App for Ezviz. This problem was open-ended, the hint may not specific enough yet, while also means we have many ideal directions and opportunity.

So we reverse thinking: Which users need to use the smart TV and under what scenarios? What problems we can solve?  To figured out these quetions we gather survey and interview, and combine the TV Pros & Cons, first set up the target people as elder group.

The elderly are a group that is usually been neglected, but it is also a group that has more needs which mainly like they are unfamiliar with new technology(mobile phones, new tech, smart homes, etc.) and the loneliness and emotional needs of children are not around.

In part of the design process, we build scenarios to figure out elder people's habits of watching TV, how they communicate with their child, and in-depth find they really need.

In the brainstorming of the solution, we have thought about many ideas, such as whether to start from interest, know what drama or TV show parents are watching TV, so there is a common topic. But it doesn't seem to be the optimal solution we want.

After many discussions and options voting, finally we identified solutions that combine with Ezviz existing mobile App:
‍
Video Call on TV: to solve the physiological problems like poor eyesight or poor hearing of the elderly. The TV operation steps are simple and easy to learn and understand.

Family Moments: The elderly can be familiar with operating the TV, watching photos and videos on the TV, and using smart TV instead of a smartphone.

In design principles, the most important principle is lightweight interaction. As a younger generation, we are used to the use of various high -tech and smart home. Even if they are not used, we can easily get started according to the guidance. However, the elderly are different. They are unfamiliar with technology products and their learning ability is slow. These all determine the number of steps required for our minimized execution operations. Use as few screens as possible and simpler operation guidelines. The user does not need to enter the text, just press a few familiar buttons on the remote control to operate.

Another design principle must be considered is accessibility. Most of the elderly have problem of the vision, we need to make the font size and contrast very clearly, the pages need to be concise, and only emphasize important information.

For maximum optimization, we did the iterate by user testing our grandparents.  I chose to show my part design to my 94 years old grandfather. I showed my mutiple version of the interface to him see how he reacted, which version was easier for him to understand before I explained how to do it. I have to say, this was a very interesting user test, because during the test, I was able to better understand the technology from the perspective of older people. Also when we gather all user testing from our parents and grandparents, we found some intersting insight as well.
‍
The common problem of elderly group is that their vision is generally not good, so we choose the way of displaying large cards(to provide larger font space) we thought it might help them for solve the vision problem but in the testing we noticed it is actually increasing the difficulty of their operation, they are not used to the operation of this big card vision. So in our final version we did not enlarge the card as a selection state, but to discharge the card horizontally in the same size without any obstruction, so that elderly can easily see all the contents of the homepage right the way.

As one of the main features, Family Moments, is through the advantages of the large TV screen, so the elderly can able to know the newest updates of their children whether it is photos or videos, and establish a bridge with children. This is not an innovation on the mobile, but on the TV the factors to be considered are different. Actually, before the usability test, I made multi-version of Family Moments and did a round of team discussion and voting, which left four options. When I bring these four options to my grandfather for usability testing, I made some tasks for him, like asking him to select the 4th picture. During the process, I found that when the selected photos or videos were enlarged by split screen like option2 and 3, it would cause visual obstacles for the elderly, because their visual focus was all on the enlarged pictures or videos, so they might less know how to switch from one picture to another.  In the 4-way slipping selection like option 4, he can understand but still feel not easy for approaching while the horizontal slipping selection which is more obvious and clear to him.  And the same result in my team member’s testing. Which lead to our final version, using zero-level design,  giving up the excess module and text description, make the page concise and clear.

During the months of the project, we spent more than half of the time to research. It is also the most challenging part of the entire project. In today's development of the Internet of Things, the convenience of technology can bring too many possibilities to people, but there are not many designs of the elderly as the user group.
The most important reason for choosing the design with the theme of the elderly is that as designers, we use our ability to build a bridge of communication and love for parents and the elderly.