Smart Actions is a contextually aware app that learns your needs and automates your daily tasks.

1) Today’s smart phones are feature rich and present a bewildering number of options. Users often do not take full advantage of these capabilities due to lack of awareness or understanding. Though very advanced, today’s phones do not adapt to user’s changing needs. 2) Each user also has unique ways they utilize their smartphone. Some features may be a requirement for some users while that same feature may be unnecessary or even carry a negative effect for another user.
3) Smart phones settings rarely interact and talk with one another. Even though these settings make up the ecosystem of the device and frequently affect one another, they struggle to make the connections that help one another out. So while your phone knows the battery is low it can’t shut off services to help make it last longer.
Smart Actions intelligently packages the wide array of functionality available on smartphones and contextually adjusts them to meet specific user’s needs.

Key Challenges:
1) Today’s smart phones are feature rich and present a bewildering number of options. Users often do not take full advantage of these capabilities due to lack of awareness or understanding. Though very advanced, today’s phones do not adapt to user’s changing needs.

2) Each user also has unique ways they utilize their smartphone. Some features may be a requirement for some users while that same feature may be unnecessary or even carry a negative effect for another user.

3) Smart phones settings rarely interact and talk with one another. Even though these settings make up the ecosystem of the device and frequently affect one another, they struggle to make the connections that help one another out. So while your phone knows the battery is low it can’t shut off services to help make it last longer.

Smart Actions intelligently packages the wide array of functionality available on smartphones and contextually adjusts them to meet specific user’s needs.

The design process was very iterative and driven heavily by research. The first step was a concept creation phase where we leveraged secondary research to define the user values, design goals and technical sensor roadmap building the overall vision for the experience. That vision was then sent through concept evaluation, where we created interactive Flash prototypes, evaluated technical dependencies, and performed visual studies of potential designs with the goal of validating the concepts before producing detailed wireframe interaction design. The draft designs that resulted from that process guided the construction of an Android APK of the application. That APK was the vehicle for iterative design validation and usability testing using in-house research sessions. After multiple rounds of validation and testing, the experience was tested using field research that allowed us to polish our user experience though graphical and language updates and refine our inference logic.

Smart Actions centers around a suggestion-based interface where users continue to use their device as normal and receive helpful, targeted suggestions that match their needs. This minimizes the burden on the user while providing a gateway to explore the rest of the UI. Another key experience within the Smart Actions framework is the rule building experience. We tried to simplify this experience as much as possible by creating “blocks” that users could add, connect, and disconnect from their rules. This graphical element assists in the user’s understanding that items can be individually edited and added to a rule. The last key experience is rule management on the landing screen. The main landing screen is streamlined to show what rules are active, and provide quick access to turn rules on and off. This quick glance view of Smart Actions cements user understanding about what is going on with their device at any given time.