UI/UX Concept Project
DECO
Want your dream home without losing your mind? Our app, DECO, is your very own style guide meant to help you design your home, your way.
Overview
DECO is an AIX app concept that is designed for those who love interior design, or for those who want to find their own unique style for their home.
My Role
UI/UX designer
Deliverables
AIX interior design application
Many homeowners struggle with decorating their homes because of a lack of space visualization, and overcomplicated design process, and no real-world connection to visualize and find the perfect decor for their homes. These struggles can keep buyers from purchasing items or lead to overspending and disunity in the room style.
Challenge
Solution
For homeowners who lack experience in designing their living space, Deco provides resources and inspiration based on user preferences, design concept visualization, and tools for users to find and purchase items.
Design Thinking Process
I utilized the Design Thinking process to design the app. The method includes the following phases:
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Empathize
I interviewed three people representing different types of living situations and life stages:
A college student living in an apartment
An adult transitioning from an apartment to a starter home
A long-term homeowner with established design preferences
The interviews revealed that:
Users get overwhelmed with picking a style at the beginning of the design process
Users are inspired by social media but struggle with decision-making
Users want quick and easy tools to guide their home design
Define
Through creating a user persona and a user journey map to reflect most of the user needs that were common in interviews, I identified the key needs for users, including:
A tool that helps match furniture, colors, and materials seamlessly
A way to experiment with layouts and placements before making purchases
A price comparison tool to make budget-conscious decisions
A smooth shopping experience that reduces the need for returns
Ideate
To generate ideas for this app, I took all of my research to create storyboards, a user flow diagram, and sketches to proceed to development.
User Flow Diagram
Features to address the needs in interior design:
AI Visualizer: for users to scan and visualize their rooms to find their desired item through the best deals or DIY alternatives
AI Style Sourcing: AI will source items it generates from the room visualization for users to have a smooth shopping experience, plan budgets, and find exactly what they want
Style Matchmaker: for users to swipe left or right on items they like to build their preferences data or to find something they like
Style Inspiration: for users to view their preferences, create mood boards, and look for inspiration
Sketches
Below are following initial sketches for the user flow diagram:
Lo-Fi/Prototype
Basic wireframes for the layout of the app shown below:
Moodboard
Features
DECO’s app features aim to aid users in visualizing their dream room, to simplify the interior design process, and provide inspiration.
AI Visualizer
AI Visualizer allows users to visualize their rooms by generating from a user-provided image of their room. Users simply input their room type, the style they want to visualize, or write a prompt for accurate room visualization.
Style Sourcing
Style Sourcing uses AI to break down a generated room from an image the user generates from the AI Visualizer into individual furniture and decor items, and to source online items that are most similar to what it generated. When available, AI can generate a DIY tutorial for crafty homeowners. Users can save their favorite items to a smart shopping mockup list that automatically estimates their total project cost.
Style Matchmaker
Style Matchmaker is a way for users to build their style profile by swiping left or right on items they prefer. User profiles will be used to personalize their feed to discover interior niche design styles.
Style Inspiration
The app provides many different forms of inspiration for users to explore. DECO provides ‘Style of the Week’, trendy styles, and DIY of the day tabs for users to stay in touch with what is trending online. Each style has its own profile with information and a mood board that users can save specific styles they like in their personalized Style Glossary.
Test
Usability testing revealed these key pain points, which guided these final design improvements:
AI Visualizer feature felt overcomplicated → simplified user flow
Style filters needed icons for easier readability → added icons and reorganized
Home page needed reorganization and a specific focus → reorganized features on home page to focus on inspiration learned from user activity
Reflection
With the rise of AI-integrated technology, creating an app that is meant to rely heavily on AI was a unique experience I haven’t had before. Building this app taught me many ways designers and users can use AI as a collaborator, and also pushed me to think outside the box for the features of this app. See the prototype to experience the full features of the app!