Hive - Connected Home

The award-winning heart of Hive’s smart-home

Hive, part of Centrica plc, whose brands include British Gas (UK) and Direct Energy (USA), selected Alloy as its long term industrial design partner to help differentiate within the Smart Home (IOT) sector. The initial challenge was to create a rich visual design language and premium CMF that elevates the Hive products away from the flat white plastic boxes currently on the market, while ensuring they remain suitably refined to blend seamlessly and discreetly into the home environment.

The resulting coherent identity provides a flexible design framework from which to create touch points and elements that are consistent across products, allowing for future expansion of the Hive ecosystem within this identity, building on the company’s core values and enabling the brand to expand and enter new markets/territories.

Smart Sensors

Working closely with the Hive team to optimise to the layout of internal components and power sources, resulted in innovative configurations that prioritized low power, high performance radio, informing the overall product silhouette. The reduced physical product volumes presented opportunities for a more refined installation within the home, for example, the narrow-elongated form of the Motion PIR Sensor allows the device to discreetly recede further into the corners of rooms than most other PIR devices, which are typically square, bulky and noticeably protrude into the living space.

See the rest of our work page for more award winning client project