Using Cosy for the first time…

Our old boiler gave up over the summer so we had a brand-new combi-boiler installed only a couple of months before I joined geo as UX/UI Designer. The boiler came with a wireless thermostat that replaced the old-fashioned thermostat dial that was fixed to the wall in our hallway. You know, the type of dial, it’s the one that your children like to ‘play with’ and inadvertently turn up when you’re not looking!

When I was offered the chance to have a product installed as part of joining geo, I thought it was great timing, and offered the opportunity for me to get insight of the customers point of view, and understand what it is really like to have a Cosy Smart Thermostat system installed in my home.

We ordered a single zone installation which comprised a Cosy Hub, Cosy Display and a Cosy Switch. The box arrived ahead of the installation date and I handed the unboxing duties to my wife, Anne (as of course I knew what was inside the box!) A quick read of the contents and she was downloading the app in readiness for the installer to arrive.

A short time later, at a time convenient to us, the engineer arrived and with him was a trainee apprentice which gave me the opportunity to see just how quick and easy it was to install the Cosy system for someone new to our devices and in what felt like no time at all everything was connected and switched on. We had a few issues with my home Wi-Fi but once that had been happily resolved by the engineer, the system was up and running. The engineer said he really liked installing the Cosy system as it was one of the easier ones on the market to set-up. (I was still undercover at this point as I had not mentioned that I work for geo!)

Because the Cosy display has an inbuilt temperature sensor, we followed the guidelines and ensured we didn’t put the display on the window sill or next to the radiator, instead positioning it in our dining room, away from any heat sources (and our children!)

That evening Anne and I sat down and setup the schedules and set points for the heating. Anne found it very straight forward to edit the default profiles for weekday and weekends and adding a third profile that would be for when Anne works from home during the week.

One interesting observation that I have taken away from installing the Cosy system is that it’s shown just how inaccurate the old-style thermostat on the wall was. When we configured our set points, we set the ‘cosy’ evening temperature to match the old thermostat settings. After running the new system for a couple of days we were colder than we had expected! This was all due to the inaccuracy of the old system!

In no time at all, and with a few tweaks to the set points via the app, our heating was running like clockwork without any issues and with the added benefit that we’ve removed that annoying habit of our boys turning up the thermostat dial without us knowing!

At the time of writing this, I’ve had the system running for few months and in that time, it’s run faultlessly. What has been interesting to note is that having the display and the app, we’ve tended to use the display to give ourselves a little boost of heat (using the Cosy button) when there has been a colder than normal night, which with a simple double-click on the display is easy to do. We did notice that with the temperature outside dropping our internal temperature also needed to be adjusted. Without having to touch our schedules, we’ve updated the set points for the heating modes (via the app) and now we are just cosy at the right time of the day throughout the week!

My experience has shown me that I do not use the app every day, I go back to it with less frequency as time goes on. Under the skin of the app is a lot of complex engineering that keeps my system running smoothly. The key for me as a UX/UI Designer is to use my experience of Cosy to keep the customer journey simple with intuitive interactions as they do not use it with the same frequency as other apps. Making the complex simple and straightforward is the challenge I face, and it’s one I look forward to on my morning commute!