Client & Project
Hive
Connected Home
Brief
Hive selected Alloy as its long-term industrial design partner to help define a premium, cohesive identity across its growing smart home ecosystem. The goal: move beyond generic white boxes to create products that feel refined, discreet, and unmistakably Hive. From thermostats to smart sensors, we developed a flexible design language and rich CMF strategy that blends seamlessly into the home. Optimised internal layouts enabled more compact, elegant forms—like the slim PIR sensor designed to sit unobtrusively in room corners. Award-winning design, built for smart living.
Services
deployed_code
Product Design
hardware
Prototype Design
factory
Design for Manufacture
Our Impact
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Products sold
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Revenue increase
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Improved sales margin
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.
