by Panasonic
* Confidential information is omitted and all the features and information presented here is in conformance with the NDA
Why MirAIe?
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Panasonic - IIC (India Innovation Center) is the first software R&D unit in Bangalore, India.
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Connect and control Panasonic appliances.
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Create a Smart Home experience.
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Make a mark in smart home ecosystem with innovation.
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A mobile app as well as a cloud as a platform solution.
My Role
UX Designer
I was the first designer to join the team. My contributions below:
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User Research
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Usability Analysis
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Interaction Design
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Personas & Scenarios and Customer Journeys
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Task flows
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Wireframes & User Flows
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Visual designs
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Innovative features
Team
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UX Designer
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Another junior UX Designer
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Product manager
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Development team
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Testing team
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Cloud team
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Marketing team
Challenges
Panasonic-IIC is operates like a start up. Fast paced with quick decision making. I faced below challenges:
Organisational:
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In a tech-driven environment, there was not enough space for user driven approach.
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Lack of Design Process or any UCD methodology.
Design related:
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Previously delivered designs were by different agencies at different period of times.
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There was no designer to support the team, specially development team.
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Design implemented ≠ design delivered.
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Usability issues
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Inconsistency in experiences, interactions and visual language
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Disparity between feature offering and users expectations.
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Visual inconsistencies
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Non-Standardised interactions
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Overcrowded designs
Constraints
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Limited time to improve the existing experience of the app modules.
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Initially no communication with real users.
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Too many modules planned in upcoming releases without a real clarity of features and functions, because the brand was trying to catch-up with competition.
Usability Analysis & UX improvements
Some modules were creating a lot of friction in the experience and users were unhappy with the app.
The immediate task for me to do quick improvements in the interactions of the modules of the app. These were much needed. I started with the usability and heuristic analysis.
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Fixed fundamental problems of interactions
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Better error handling
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Improved holistic experiences for modules
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Improvement in consistency in interactions & visual language.
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Sign up via phone
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Sign up via email
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Reset password
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Error handling
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Fixed fundamental problems of interactions
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Better error handling
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Improved holistic experiences for modules
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Improvement in consistency in interactions & visual language.
Before
After
Introducing Design Thinking
I started to set up the proper design culture and introduced Design Thinking.
To give our users an easier, richer and centralised smart home experience with relevant personalisation and also connect with them as a brand.
I introduced the design process gradually to shape up the evolution of the product for upcoming releases. I collaborated with different stakeholders to lead the design of the new modules.
Empathise
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User research and interviews
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User Insights from existing qualitative market research
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Gathering feedback from customer care team
Define
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Personas & Scenarios
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Customer Journeys
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Empathy Maps
Ideate
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Brainstorming sessions
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Task Flows
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Low-Fi sketches on whiteboards
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Paper prototypes
Prototype
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Hi-Fi wireframes
- Interactive prototypes
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Visual Designs
Test
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User testing for beta versions
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Customer feedback
User research
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I read through an existing 200 pages of Qualitative research done by the marketing team to understand the buying tends and behaviours.
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I connected with customer care team to understand the issues and feedback with related resolutions.
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I read through user reviews on Play Store to understand major issues users faced. In several sessions we as a team tried to ask right questions to gain insights.
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Conducted user interviews with internal users.
What users said
Insights
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Users are not happy the way we handle issues and service requests.
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Users have to call customer care and follow up a lot of times for their issues and they are frustrated.
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Users have ideas and feedback for the app and there is no constructive way to gather it.
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Users are also looking at and using competitor products.
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Users need healthy and convenient smart home experience for the family members.
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Users are busy during weekdays and want to spend quality time with family, kids and friends on weekends.
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Users (decision makers) are tech enthusiast and want to try new products and things.
User personas
Backed up by user research and interview findings, I mapped 3 user personas. One example below
User journey
Looking at competition
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Apps reflect the mental model of users home.
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Users can create rooms and assign devices.
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Automations to cater to repeated needs and patterns.
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Up to date status of devices and rooms.
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Dashboard with Favourites feature.
User needs
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Users are not happy the way we handle issues and service requests.
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Users have to call customer care and follow up a lot of times for their issues and they are frustrated.
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Users have ideas and feedback for the app and there is no constructive way to gather it.
How might we
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How might we help Manish to diagnose device easily?
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How might we help Manish to quickly reach customer care when he needs it?
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How might we help Manish to send the feedback and suggestions smoothly?
Possible solution
An in app feedback mechanism.
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Direct users to quick feedback where they can easily share their issues with the devices.
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Entry point to feedback and customer care at right touch points.
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Customers can share their suggestions.
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Customer care should follow up with the users as soon as possible for frequent issues.
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Close the loop - “Experience does not end at the app”
Wireframes
In App feedback: Key screens
Entry point to in-app feedback at important touch points
From device settings
From device diagnostics
From device connection errors
User flow
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From Settings screen
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From device settings screen
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From Diagnostics screen
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From Error screen
User needs
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Users are also looking at and using competitor products.
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Users need smooth and convenient smart home experience.
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Users are busy during weekdays and want to spend quality time with family, kids and friends on weekends.
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Users want to create a healthy environment for their family members.
Possible solution
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Relevant pre-defined automations which cater to main user journeys.
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Create custom automations.
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Pre-defined scenes for different home environments - relaxing, party etc.
Improving Onboarding UX
Existing onboarding:
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Did not match visual language of the app.
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Did not match branding strategy.
Previous
New Onboarding
Work on other modules
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Air quality sensor
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Video door bell
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Water heater
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Device onboarding and connectivity
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Washing machine
I had a set of problems and good ideas of how to solve them, I prioritised the main users flows of the upcoming features and started creating low-fi prototypes on whiteboards. I had to do multiple iterations along with the team to reach to a point where I was sure that the next step is to create Hi-Fi wireframes, Visual Designs & User Flows
Final Design has several deliverables, like Visual Designs, Specs, Interaction Flows, Assets and interactive prototypes.
Hi-Fi wireframes
User Flows with the Visual Designs
Visual Design improvements
I unified the visual language of the app as much as I can, given the constraints of deadlines.
We are working on developing a Style Guide to make the designs look relatively more coherent. There is still work to be done, however we have successfully achieved:
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Improved visual language
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Cleaner Designs which solved the problem of overcrowded information and layouts
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Less Visual load in designs and improved attention guidance
Usability Tests & feedback
We have a set of users which are contacted for beta releases every time. I conducted few usability testing sessions using google analytics.
I identified the usability issues and related improvements in the proper context, examples are:
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Relevant features.
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Identifying missed usability issues like vague error messages and frequent logging out.
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More innovative ideas as a consequence of brainstorming sessions based on customer feedback.
Learnings
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How to integrate design process in ad-hoc and Kanban.
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Process improvements in tech driven culture.
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Improve UX in various modules in pre-planned in quick releases.
What next?
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Create comprehensive Design Guidelines and Style Guides and unify the visual language.
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Introduce the standard UI elements to bring in consistency in interactions and help development team to create a library for those elements
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Dark theme and premium look
What next?
I had come up with several innovative ideas for further evolution of the product. Some are
Curated personalised Insights
Deep actionable insights curated from connected devices ex, home health and calendar integration.
Multi - User support
Share control with other family members.
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Collaboration
