ADT +

ADT+ is the new Smart Home Security System

ADT+ is a comprehensive design effort by a company that has been in the security business for 145 years, to rewrite the rules of the alarm industry through better design.

The refreshed hardware, UX, and App design of the ADT+ system rethinks prior product offerings.  ADT+ is a fully integrated product platform that provides a more advanced and seamless user experience across security, life safety, and home automation through a common App, consistent user interactions, and a visually unified family suite of sustainably designed physical products.

The basic form-factor geometries of a cylinder, circle, and pill-shape fit well into most user environments and are refined to be sensitive to where users would like to place in their house whether on wall, a desk, or tabletop.

The previous hardware components used by ADT for security solutions were created by various vendors and lacked unity and a strong ADT brand presence. The ADT+ product line introduces a new design language that is distinctly ADT, yet flexible enough to accommodate various partner devices providing users with a visually and functionally integrated solution.

OPPORTUNITY: 

streamline the ADT product line to one App and one suite of hardware that would appeal to a wide range of ADT customers.

The goal for the new ADT+ product line was to create one App and one suite of hardware that was intuitive, modular, and powerful enough for all types of ADT customers, from the modest needs of an apartment dweller to the most ambitious/robust and cutting-edge smart homeowners, the ADT+ product line was designed to handle all.

This challenge created an opportunity for ADT to streamline its many Apps and hardware suites into a one App and one cohesive suite of hardware.

WHO WE DESIGNED FOR:

The new ADT+ system needed to meet the needs of older legacy customers, younger customers, and new potential customers. As such, we were designing for existing, sometimes older customers, as well as new and future customers. The new ADT+ product line was also designed for DIY installs or professional installs. When designing the new ADT+ system to work for both DIY installs and professional installs, we found that what is best for the DIY user was often best for the professional install techs as well.

IMPACT / SOLUTION:

• Final design solution created a modular system that can be small and simple or large and robust.
• Consistent interactions make hardware easy to install and maintain by DIY customers and also pro installation techs.
• The new solution created more consistency across all interactions, from how users open and install hardware, to how arm and disarm the system, and how system issues are communicated.
• Decreased the gap between physical and digital interfaces/interactions. Created more consistent patterns across digital and physical devices, such as connecting and setting up devices, communicating the current arm state, and system issues (like low batteries, offline devices, tampered devices).
• Redesigned the emergency panic buttons to make calling for help easier and more intuitive when a user is under stress. To make calling for help easy, while adding feedback from the light ring to reduce false alarms.
• The new hardware better blends into the user’s home and recedes into the background, showing only the most important information, when not in use, then wake when a user is nearby.
• The new hardware is responsive to user’s needs and actions. Through the use of proximity detection, when a user is nearby, the new ADT+ hardware will light up the necessary buttons to help guide a user through the arming and disarming experience.

DESIGN PROCESS:

The design team took ADT’s most successful patterns and interactions from the older hardware and Apps and evolved them. Removed older interactions that were not working and replaced them. Design and research worked together to prototype and research potential designs with current ADT smart home customers, competitor customers, and smart home enthusiasts. Getting feedback from legacy customers and younger smart home enthusiasts helped us to discover where our products were working, what needed to evolve, and what needed to be replaced.