Due to limitations with respect to the software, focus was placed on upgrading the aesthetics and reducing clutter of the operating system.
Due to memory limitations, alpha channels and transparencies were not supported. This meant that effects such as transparent windows and rounded button corners had to be faked.
Users of HA Pads come from many different cultural backgrounds, meaning that special consideration needs to be taken to ensure ease of understanding with respect to icon design.
Several sets of icons were designed in order to increase recognition across vast user bases. For example: the "Dining Room" icon features different types of cutlery depending on the language of the operating system.
The prior iteration of the "Climate Control" suffered from feature-creep. In the earliest iteration of the climate control screen, there were only a limited number of features provided, but as developers gained greater access to more features, more and more buttons were thrown onto the page with little consideration for usability heuristics.
Going into the new design, emphasis was placed on grouping functions together logically and reducing visual clutter. This included smarter use of icon spacing, specific use of colour to increase ease of discernibility, and introduction of "tabs", or "sub-screens" to hide information that is not immediately relevant to the user.