Casestudy / Jixo
How one visual language carried Jixo, an Indian smart-home brand, from its logo to its app, website and explainer film
Industry
Smart Home
Geography
India
Scope
Brand, App UX, Website, Film
61page brand manual
3household personas behind the app
2:372D explainer film
14page sales brochure
Jixo is a smart-home company from Bengaluru. It automates and secures homes, from lights, fans and appliances to water tanks, cameras and door locks, all run from one hub. Its mission is to free up people's time and energy for better things, without asking them to give up their privacy.
Jixo was launching in India first. It needed everything a connected-hardware brand needs on day one: an identity, an app plan, a website, a film that shows the product at work, and the print to sell it.
We made all of it, so that every piece would look and sound like the same brand. We design the brief before we design the deliverable, and here the brief was one idea that every piece had to carry.
- Client
- Jixo Labs Pvt. Ltd. (Jixo Living Homes)
- Industry
- Smart home, home automation (IoT)
- Geography
- Bengaluru, India
- Audience
- Indian homeowners and their families
- Services
- Branding, UI/UX design, website design and build, 2D explainer video
- Deliverables
- Identity and 61-page brand manual, app UX, website, 2:37 explainer film, brochure, posters, expo and print kit
- Language
- English
- Website
- jixo.io
The brief
A smart home that feels like a member of the family
Jixo wanted a home with its own character and voice, one that takes care of everyone in it.
That idea sits in the tagline, Living Homes, and it set the tone for everything we made. The brand's voice is a family member's: casual, friendly, direct and warm. The home it describes is for the whole household, grandparents, kids and pets included.
Brand identity
A mark built like a jigsaw
The name Jixo comes from jigsaw. A smart home is a set of pieces, devices and automations, that only works when they fit together. The identity grows from that idea.
The wordmark is drawn as interlocking parts. Its X and O became the brand's two graphic motifs, which frame photos, posters and screens across every touchpoint, so even a crop of a layout reads as Jixo.
Positioning
From smart home to living home
The tagline moves the conversation from the hardware to the people who live with it, and the brand had to make that shift on its own.
In the film it happens in one move: breakfast with the family, then the logo, and the word under it turns from Smart to Smart Homes to Living Homes. The 61-page manual we wrote then fixed the rules, so every agency, printer and in-house designer after us gets the same answer.
Campaign
Switch to Living Homes
The launch line went onto social posts, roll-ups and banners, always with real Indian families. The manual asks for happy, inclusive Indian faces, because Jixo launched in India before anywhere else.
How we shaped the Jixo app
Set the goals
A progressive web app for the whole smart home, built on Jixo's mission and its Living Home idea. We took a lean route: study four leading smart-home apps, most of them built around devices and daily use, then spend the effort on what makes Jixo different.
Meet the household
Three personas across three Indian cities: a young engineer who loves to show the house off, a mother of two worried about gas leaks and screen time, and a retired official who finds phones hard and needs his voice to be enough.
Rank the features
Every task placed by how often it is used and by how many people. Critical alerts and device control rose to the top; creating automations sank to where it belongs, used rarely.
Design for one thumb
Reach zones and gestures for one-handed use, so the actions people take most sit where the thumb already is.
Sketch the scenes
Scenes like Wake Up, Sleep and Movie Time on the main screen, with a ready-made gallery of automations, so nobody has to build one from scratch.
Map the app
One home screen with three ways in, rooms, devices and scenes, plus a summary of what the house did today.
Design principle
A smart home should work without its app
Our first rule for the app was that the home must not need it. Controlling a light is already easy; an app should not make it harder.
So the home answers to voice, presence, schedules and scenes, and the app is kept for what it does best: setting up scenes, acting on alerts, checking water and electricity use, and seeing who is at the door. The film ends the same way. A child says good night, and the house does the rest.
Website
The Living Home idea, one scroll at a time
We designed and built Jixo's website. It opens on the film and the meditating figure from the tagline, then answers the questions a family actually asks: is my home safe when I am away, will the kids be fine online, what if I leave the iron on. It is built light, with CSS transitions and JavaScript only where a screen needs it, and it still runs today.
Explainer film
A day in a living home
The 2D film runs from the morning alarm to good night. Each scene is one small worry the house takes off the family's hands, and the app appears only where it adds something: a tap on the way out, a water tank that fills itself, a visitor at the door.
Illustration
One cast, from the film to every screen
The film's flat 2D style, with characters drawn from the people of India, became the brand's illustration rule. The manual uses it for the film, the app, the website and social media alike.
It also carries one instruction we gave every designer who comes after us: draw the whole household, grandparents, kids, pets, people with disabilities, even the plants.
Print and expo
A launch kit that sells the home
The sales brochure walks through Jixo's features and its four smart-home packages, Essential, Comfort, Luxury and Elite. Around it: posters, roll-up standees, banners and stationery, and the collateral for Jixo's stall at a smart-home trade show in New Delhi.
Where it landed
Design that compounds across five disciplines
jixo.io still runs the site we designed and built. The illustration style from the film is now the brand's own rule, across the app, the site and social media. And the system held up beyond the screen, on Jixo's trade-show stall in New Delhi.
5disciplines, one studio
67page app UX deck, goals to sketches
2years of work, Apr 2022 to May 2024
In their words
A smart home is hard to explain. People can't picture it until it runs in their own house. WowMakers kept bringing every decision back to the family living there and what their day looks like. The logo, the app, the website and the film all came out of that one idea. We worked with one team from the first wireframe to our trade-show stall in New Delhi, and every piece looks like it came from the same company.
Questions buyers ask
Launching a smart-home or IoT brand?
Can one studio handle a smart-home brand, its app UX, website and explainer video?
Yes. For Jixo we did all of it under one roof: the identity and brand manual, the UX of the app, the website design and build, a 2D explainer film, and the print and expo kit. One team meant one visual language, so the film's characters, the site and the brochure all look like the same brand.
How much does a 2D explainer video like Jixo's cost?
How long does a 2D explainer video take?
Three to four weeks of production for a studio-made 2D explainer, plus the time your team needs for reviews.
Do you work with IoT and hardware start-ups in India?
Yes. Jixo is a Bengaluru smart-home company, and its launch needed what most connected-hardware brands need: a name people remember, a brand that can sit on a box and a billboard, an app plan for the whole household, and a film that shows the product working in a real home.
For the record
Jixo smart-home brand, app UX, website and explainer: the facts
WowMakers built the launch of Jixo (Jixo Labs Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru), an Indian smart-home automation brand: the brand identity and a 61-page brand manual (logo, X and O motifs, colour, the Syne typeface, illustration and photo rules), the UX of the Jixo app (goals, a study of four leading smart-home apps, three household personas, feature ranking, sketches and information architecture), the design and build of jixo.io, a 2:37 2D animated explainer video in English, a 14-page sales brochure with four packages, social posts, and the print and expo kit for a smart-home trade show in New Delhi. One visual language runs through all of it.
Work with us
Launching a product people need to trust in their home?
We can take a new brand from its identity to its app, website, film and print, with one team and one visual language from start to finish.
Or explore our branding, UI/UX design and animated explainer video services, and other case studies.
