The project itself :
Project Overview
As part of a 10-week UX studio project with Google Nest, our team reimagined the thermostat ecosystem across embedded hardware and mobile. We designed three distinct directions for different user archetypes - Conscious Minimalist, Uncompromising Geek, and Unwilling Employee—while keeping navigation, scheduling, and controls consistent across devices. I contributed to all three concepts and took full ownership of Sparrow’s Nest, the conscious minimalist direction focused on visualizing energy savings through calm, meaningful interactions.
Problem:
Decision-makers wanted to spin off Nest with a sharper, persona-driven strategy, but the current thermostat experience didn’t adapt to different user types. Interfaces across hardware and mobile felt disconnected, making it hard for people to understand their energy impact, manage schedules across rooms, and stay engaged—especially when each persona needed a different level of control and visual complexity.
Goal:
Design a unified thermostat experience that spans hardware and mobile, with three tailored directions that all share the same core flows. For Sparrow’s Nest, the goal was to help conscious minimalists see the impact of their temperature choices, build sustainable habits, and manage schedules quickly - through a minimal, distraction-free interface anchored by a simple tree-based energy metaphor.
Tools:
Figma
FigJam
Responsibilities:
collaborating with a team of four to define the three persona directions and shared flows across hardware and mobile,
conducting and synthesizing user research and journey mapping to understand needs of each persona, sagarjariwala.com
leading Sparrow’s Nest end-to-end: concepting the tree-based energy metaphor and mapping core flows for home, schedule, and menu, sagarjariwala.com
creating low- to high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes for Sparrow’s Nest on both thermostat hardware and mobile, sagarjariwala.com
iterating on the designs through peer and user feedback, improving accessibility and reducing friction in key tasks, sagarjariwala.com
preparing design specs and documentation to hand off the three directions as a cohesive, cross-platform system.
the good stuff :
Spotlight
Sparrow’s Nest is a Nest thermostat experience for conscious minimalists, people who care about comfort and energy, but want the interface to stay calm, simple, and out of the way.
Instead of graphs and complex controls, Sparrow’s Nest uses a tree-based visual metaphor to show how everyday decisions grow (or shrink) a “forest” of energy savings over time. Both the thermostat and companion app focus on a few clear actions, gentle feedback, and a layout that feels as minimal as the people using it.
Context line about the other directions
Alongside Sparrow’s Nest, our team also designed Falcon’s Nest for data-driven power users and Robin’s Nest for reluctant/unwilling employees. We co-created the shared flows and foundations for all three, but I owned Sparrow’s Nest end to end, from early concept through flows, wireframes, and final screens.
Digging into the context :
Discovery
To keep Sparrow’s Nest focused, I first translated “conscious minimalist” into a concrete design language:
Intentional, not bare.
The interface should feel light and uncluttered, but still informative.
Impact-aware.
Every major interaction should hint at its energy impact.
Low cognitive load.
Few screens, clear hierarchy, and predictable flows.
Defining terms
What does “conscious minimalist” mean?
Through secondary research, competitive analysis, and mapping our own experiences with thermostats at home and in shared spaces, a few patterns kept surfacing:
These insights made it clear that Sparrow’s Nest needed to visualize impact, lighten the scheduling load, and stay minimal without breaking away from the shared Nest system.
Energy impact is invisible.
People rarely understand how a two-degree change or a schedule tweak actually affects their bill or carbon footprint, so “set and forget” becomes the default.
Scheduling is mentally heavy.
Editing schedules across multiple rooms and days quickly becomes overwhelming—especially on tiny hardware screens.
One UI can’t satisfy everyone.
Minimalists, geeks, and reluctant users all want different depths of information and control. A single “average” interface ends up frustrating everyone.
All about the user :
User Research
Sparrow’s Nest — grow your comfort, grow your forest.
To ground our concepts, we first mapped how different people actually use thermostats across hardware and mobile. As a team we researched three archetypes—Conscious Minimalists, Uncompromising Geeks, and Unwilling Employees—then defined shared flows for home, scheduling, and menu screens on both the Nest device and app. From there, I focused on the Sparrow’s Nest direction, using our research to design a calmer, sustainability-driven experience for conscious minimalists.
Target Audiences
Three archetypes, three Nest experiences.
Conscious Minimalist
→ Sparrow’s Nest
values sustainability and calm, wants simple controls and clear feedback on impact.
Uncompromising Geek
→ Falcon’s Nest
craves data, precision, and deep customization.
Unwilling Employee
→ Robin’s Nest
low motivation, needs playful, low-effort controls.
Pain Points
Across hardware + mobile, three themes kept repeating.
Fragmented hardware & app
Interfaces on the wall and on the phone didn’t feel connected, so people weren’t sure which device to use for what—especially when managing multiple rooms.
Invisible energy impact
Users struggled to understand how their temperature and schedule choices affected energy use or bills, making it hard to build sustainable habits.
One-size-fits-all UI
A single interface could not satisfy minimalists, power users, and reluctant users at once—each persona needed a different level of control, data, and visual richness.
Key Journey –
Conscious Minimalist
For Sparrow’s Nest, I focused on a core journey: a conscious minimalist adjusting their home schedule to stay comfortable while reducing energy use. This journey guided the flows and states for the thermostat and app.
Goal
Stay comfortably warm/cool while growing a “forest” of energy savings over time.
Actions
Check today’s energy trees → tweak temperature or schedule → review weekly pattern → confirm changes on hardware or app.
Feelings
Starts unsure if small changes matter → feels reassured when tree visuals and schedules clearly show progress.
Opportunities
Use the tree metaphor and minimal UI to keep energy impact visible, reduce decision fatigue, and make “doing the right thing” feel effortless.
The project schematically :
Design
Before designing any screens, our team mapped a unified user flow that works for all three personas across both thermostat and mobile. We focused on:
Checking current comfort and energy health (Home)
Editing schedules (Schedule)
Adjusting global settings (Menu)
This became the backbone for Sparrow’s Nest, Falcon’s Nest, and Robin’s Nest.
Rapid prototyping
To quickly test the Sparrow’s Nest flow, I built a set of low- to mid-fidelity prototypes focused on three core moments: the Static room view, the Menu / energy summary, and the Schedule editor. These prototypes let people tap through checking the current temperature, seeing how much energy they’d saved in “forest” form, and editing a day’s schedule, so we could validate the tree metaphor and interaction patterns before investing in full visual polish.
User testing
Once the first Sparrow’s Nest visual direction was in place, we ran usability tests using the Static, Menu, and Schedule screens plus the hardware dial (left set of screens above). We asked participants to complete simple tasks—check today’s energy performance, adjust a room’s schedule, change the temperature on the dial—and then talked through what felt clear or confusing.
Key things we heard and observed:
On Static, people weren’t always sure what to look at first—the trees, the icons, or the temperature—so the main read on comfort and efficiency felt a bit busy.
On Menu, the forest illustration and text competed with each other, making it harder to quickly scan “Energy Saved Today” vs “Energy Saved UTD.”
On Schedule, some users struggled to parse the time blocks and state labels at a glance; the layout felt dense for something they’d only touch occasionally.
On the hardware dial, the overlay information and forest indicator sometimes blended into the background photo, hurting legibility.
Refining & iterating
Using that feedback, I evolved the visuals into the final Sparrow’s Nest designs (right set of screens):
Static → simplified hierarchy so the temperature and forest ring are the primary read, with supporting icons secondary. The ring of dots clearly communicates efficiency without extra illustration.
Menu → clarified typography and layout around the grove of trees so “Energy Saved Today” and “Energy Saved UTD” are easier to scan and compare.
Schedule → cleaned up spacing, labels, and state pills (Comfort / Eco / Sleep) so the day’s pattern reads left-to-right like a simple timeline, making tweaks feel lighter.
Hardware dial → refined the overlay styling and forest icon so the current temperature and efficiency badge sit clearly on top of the background image.
The core concept stayed the same, but usability testing helped push Sparrow’s Nest toward a calmer, higher-contrast, and more immediately understandable experience for conscious minimalists.
Component library & dev handoff
To make Sparrow’s Nest buildable, I translated the UI into a structured component library and a developer handoff file:
Built reusable components for temperature cards, forest bands, schedule buttons, mode chips, and icon rows, all tied to shared type and spacing tokens.
Documented each screen with redlines for font sizes, paddings, icon spacing, and touch targets, so developers could recreate layouts without guessing.
Added short usage notes explaining interaction logic (e.g., how the temp slider updates state, how schedule buttons behave, and how the forest responds to changes).
This combination of library + handoff file meant Sparrow’s Nest wasn’t just a polished concept—it was a clear, implementation-ready spec that could plug into a larger Nest design system.
Looking back on it :
Outcome
By the end of the project we delivered a three-direction Nest ecosystem that still feels like one product family: Sparrow’s Nest for conscious minimalists, Falcon’s Nest for data-driven geeks, and Robin’s Nest for reluctant employees. Each direction has its own visual voice and level of complexity, but they all share the same underlying flows, components, and cross-platform behavior. Sparrow’s Nest, in particular, proved that a simple forest metaphor and calm visual language can make energy impact feel tangible without overwhelming people with charts or settings.
Takeways
One system, three personalities:
Working on Sparrow’s Nest while co-creating Falcon’s and Robin’s nests taught me how powerful shared IA and components are. Once the skeleton was consistent, it became much easier to push each direction’s personality without breaking the product.
Metaphors are powerful, but need guardrails
The forest metaphor resonated with testers, but only after we simplified the visuals and clarified when trees should change. I learned that metaphors need clear rules or they quickly become confusing decoration.
Testing beats assumptions
Our early hi-fi designs looked polished, but usability testing revealed hierarchy and legibility issues that weren’t obvious to the team. Iterating from that feedback made the final designs calmer, clearer, and more trustworthy.
Designing across hardware and mobile
Keeping thermostat and app in sync forced me to think in flows, not screens—every decision had to make sense from across the room and up close on a phone. That mindset is something I now bring into any multi-surface project.