🎓 MA Thesis · Visual & Experience Design, University of Europe for Applied Sciences · 2026

Role: Sole researcher & designer — literature review, comparative analysis, productdesign, UI, working prototype

Role: Sole researcher & designer — literature review, comparative analysis, product design, UI, working prototype

Timeline: ~1 semester, 6 Months

Tools: Figma, React, Anthropic Claude API, Vercel

Code: github.com/charitywachiraux-hub/Hearth

Live prototype: hearth-alpha-seven.vercel.app

Code: github.com/charitywachiraux-hub/Hearth

Full thesis: link coming once published — available on request

The Vision

Smart homes generate constant streams of data about the people living in them, and almost none of it is visible to those people. Consent, where it exists at all, is a checkbox signed once at setup, in legal language, before any data was even flowing. That's not meaningful consent — it's compliance theater.

Hearth is my answer to that gap: a privacy-first smart home system — a physical hub, a mobile app, and an AI agent — built on one premise. Nothing leaves your home without your knowledge.

The Challenge

Four academic sources (Bejarano et al. 2016, Georgiev & Schlögl 2018, Mohammadi & Hammink 2017, Popoola et al. 2024), synthesized thematically, surfaced five recurring UX problems in smart home data practice:

1. Invisible data collection — devices record constantly; no real-time way to know what's captured.
2. Opaque, uncontrollable consent — granted once at setup, never meaningfully again.
3. Ecosystem fragmentation — every manufacturer has its own app and policy; no unified view of the home.
4. Low data literacy — even visible data can't be interpreted, so users settle into resigned acceptance.