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Selected academic project · Product innovation · IoT · FIAP MBA · 2020 — 2022
EMC: making home energy use visible before the bill arrives
An IoT energy-monitoring concept I created for my UX Strategy Design MBA at FIAP — from research and branding to a working ESP32 prototype, tested with ~80 users and selected Top 10 at FIAP StartupONE.
Role
Idea owner & product designer
Timeline
1.5 years · 2020 — 2022
Team
Me + 2 MBA classmates
Scope
Research, benchmarking, interaction design, prototyping, usability tests, pitch, branding
01 — Context & problem
Paying for energy through a rear-view mirror
Our research showed that Brazilian households see the electricity bill as their heaviest monthly burden — yet they have no visibility into consumption until the bill arrives, charged for what has already been spent.
The challenge: help people find ways to cut energy costs in the most transparent and accessible way possible, through an interface that doesn’t require any knowledge of electronics.
02 — Users & constraints
Affordable, easy to install, and actually helpful
Some households pay less than US$10 a month for electricity, so the product only made sense if it was cheap and simple to install. Beyond monitoring, it had to teach: consumption tips, savings advice and alerts for tariff-flag changes. For small businesses, it would flag high-consumption equipment to help price products and services more accurately.
03 — My role & process
From an ESP32 on my desk to app prototypes in users’ hands
I built the hardware prototype with an ESP32 — a low-cost Arduino-like board — and a non-invasive current sensor that measures the watts passing through a wire and sends them to a remote database. Running on my laptop’s power supply, the readings were highly consistent. We then designed wireframes and interface prototypes and tested them with users.
04 — Validation
A crowded idea, an open market
Benchmarking surfaced many similar solutions abroad, but in Brazil only one startup, focused on businesses and renting its equipment for a monthly fee — a model we believed wouldn’t work for households. That gap shaped EMC’s low-cost, buy-once positioning.
~80
users in usability tests
Top 10
FIAP StartupONE 2022
1
working hardware prototype
3
people, from idea to pitch
05 — Solution & pitch
Brand, story and product
06 — Learnings
Designing hardware and software together
EMC taught me to treat the physical device, the data pipeline and the app as one experience — and that price and installation effort are UX decisions as much as the interface itself.
Contact
Let’s build products people trust.
Open to Senior Product Designer roles — remote or international. HealthTech, VR/XR, AI, and complex SaaS are where I do my best work.
Worked with
AbbVie · French Army · ADM · Cargill · Amaggi · LDC · Strada · Hoobox · Eretz.bio
© 2026 Antonio Prado · São Paulo, Brazil
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