Introduction
Hub.me is a white label security/home automation app used by over 90,000 user around the world.
The Challenge
Develop a new User Experience in an ever-changing industry and marketplace.
Research
As Hub.me is a B2B2C product there are 4 sets of research avenues on which I embarked and maintained on an ongoing basis:
1. Competitor Research
My main task was to constantly follow these players and watch for new app version and new features introduced into the marketplace.
There are many direct competitors in the Home Security and Automation market. Some of them include: Samsung SmartThings, At&t’s Digital Life, Alarm.com, to name just a few, so there is always more to learn about competitors.
2. Direct Customer Research
Each of the 9 Global customers (B2B2c model) of Hub.me has different needs and a different language or dialect. My main task in this research segment is to conduct field and phone interviews and quarterly check-ins in order to gage the ever changing needs of my customers.
3. End User Research
End User Research is an ongoing process of learning more about our user’s needs as well as performing user testing of our product on the users. Through interviews and site visits I learn what works for our users and how their day to day is interweaved into our product.
4. Expert Research
Interviews with market players and client stake-holders in order to test our ideas against their knowledge.
Define
Through the construction of Empathy Maps and summery of our many conversations with customers I came up with a list of needs/must haves for the Connected Home CX/UX/UI:
- Direct user access to dashboard, devices, routines and rooms.
- Easy “one-touch” user actions on devices, routines and rooms.
- A user interface that builds on tap/swipe logic a user already has.
- Speed up processes and reduce customer friction when signing up, logging in, verifying credentials, adding new devices and new sub users.
- From a B2B2C perspective, provide our customers with a product that makes them look really good.
Ideate
My ideas centered around end users (less our direct customers or CSPs). I honed-in on a UX that was: Simple and quick to understand Quick to operate in emergencies Easily and infinitely expandable Would work easily in all our markets regardless of the local language.
Here are some initial drawings:
I came up with “The Tile”, a square shaped UI item that would represent any kind of UI assets we have.
The Tile worked really well with homes, zones (partitions), rooms, devices and routines.
Prototype
Click on above images to launch an image gallery.
Prototyping is an important phase of the Design Thinking process. as you can see in the above gallery each device had it’s own tile which would go through it’s own process of Prototyping and Testing, this is because each device has a it’s own set of user interactions.
Samples
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Some Examples of the Interaction Design of Hub.me
Test
Our testing process was made to fit our business. Because our business (being B to B to C) we phased our testing so we first test our own customers (CSP’s) in order to get their buy-in and then test their customers, the end users.
In our phase 1 testing (CSP’s) covered some 40 testers in all levels of seniority from Global Vice Presidents down to field representatives.
Our phase 2 testing had 3 distinct sessions:
London, England – 45 current customers
Israel – 20 Amdocs employees
Madrid, Spain – 10 callcenter workers, two subscribers and 1 field installer.
We spent 3 hours with each subscriber and a total of 9 hours with the field installer.