Luca Toscano - Urmet Bean

Urmet Bean

A telecare hub for the entire home

ABOUT

Bean is a personal project submitted for an open contest on Desall in May 2018 for Urmet ATE, an Italian manufacturer of home security devices. The company's brief was to design a smart home safety hub and a remote that could help people in need calling emergency services.

MY ROLE

Research, Industrial design, Design engineering

TEAMMATES

Personal project

DURATION

May 2018

RESEARCH

A detailed project brief

Urmet shared with all the contestants a very detailed brief, describing both the expected target, the technical requirements and the minimum set of interactions that the device and the remote had to support. While primarily targeting seniors, I wanted this product to have a modern design, with tactile materials and rounded geometry, appealing to the entire family with its friendly and trustworthy appearance, so it could easily fit into a home.

Research insights

INSIGHT

Little room to interpretation

Given the strict requirements given by Urmet, there was little to no room to come up with interaction proposals that differed from the original guidelines. Since the UX was already defined, most of the wiggle room was going to be on the aesthetic.

INSIGHT

The hub is just half of the solution

While most of the interactions were being carried out by the hub, the remote needed to be a simplified version of it, allowing users to achieve the call for help with an even simpler interaction, especially when far away from the hub itself.

DEVELOPMENT

A discreet, yet modern device

My research focused on emphasizing a user-friendly and reliable interface, as well as exploring the use of materials like fabric in home appliances, drawing inspiration from companies like Google and Vifa. Early sketches and 3D models led me to favor a slightly angled front face for improved visibility and user interaction. To ensure stability and accommodate internal components, I opted for a lower hard case while experimenting with a fabric cover.

Collage of different industrial products used for inspiration

Picture of me in front of a collage of sketches pinned to the wall

Early sketches of the Urmet Bean telecare hub

Collage of renders of the Urmet Bean hub and wearable

3D renders of the different parts composing the Urmet Bean product shell

OUTCOME

Your new safety companion

Named after its distinctive bean-shaped body, Bean is a compact hub that fulfils the company's requirements. It boasts an intuitive interface with three main physical buttons and a digital display for additional information. Despite the project wasn't selected for the contest, I was happy about the quality of my output and about taking the risk to explore the device's engineering, a topic on which at the time I had very little familiarity with.