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2019
Project Thayer by Ring
Background
Amazon acquired Ring in February 2018. In early 2019, I joined an Amazon team to initiate a new product funded by Ring. I joined the team at the very early stage and lead UX design from end-to-end. I was tasked to complete a MLP prototype to present to Amazon's internal and external business stakeholders in two months. Project Thayer allows home owners to understand risks in their home and actions they can take to make their property safer and more secure. As the eyes and ears of the home, the app can be used by customers proactively to protect their homes and prevent potential hazards, such as leaks, fire, and burglary.
Background
My role
Led the design ownership over the end-to-end user experience for the new Thayer app, which encompassing a very large number of cases and inputs from data science, tech, and business stakeholders. Dealings with and resolving ambiguity, deep dived on customers' needs and wants, collaborated with Product Managers to refine requirement and customer journey.
Usability Testing
User Interviews
Rapid Prototyping
Stakeholder Engagement
Background
Agile / Iterative Design
Information Architecture
Visual Design
Background
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Background
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Problem
55% of home owner insurance claims are either
due to fire damage or water leaks that could have been
avoided if detected and suppressed early.
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Background
Solution
A new experience enabling users to be aware of the risks in their home and actions needed taken to make their property safer. As the “Carfax” and telematics of the home, this tool proactively helps prevent potential hazards, such as leaks, fires, and burglary.
Home Health Score
The aggregated overall score for your home. This will contain feeds from the following scores: Fire, Safety, Security, Water, and Exterior.
Data aggregation during user onboarding
Information tied to the user’s home address found in the account. Consists of 1st and 3rd party data. User also needs to answer some additional question in order to get the best possible score.
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Background
User Interviews & Usability Study
Objective & Background
In November 2019, I conducted a usability study for Project Thayer. The goal of this study was to identify opportunities for Project Thayer to become the place homeowners go to proactively monitor and improve the health and safety of their home. This will be the first study of a series of user interviews for Project Thayer. For the initial study, we focused on the first-time user experience (FTUE) to understand how homeowners would interact with the Thayer app, and their behaviors, attitudes and motivations around keeping their home safer and securer using the Thayer app.
Approach & Methodology
"Thinking aloud may be the single most valuable usability engineering method." - Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering.
This is an in-person usability testing, which requires the test to be completed in the physical presence of a UX moderator. In-person tests follows the Think-aloud protocols - involve participants thinking aloud as they are performing a set of specified tasks, to make thought processes as explicit as possible during task performance. Observers are asked to take notes of what participants say and do, without attempting to interpret their actions and words, and especially noting places where they encounter difficulty. All sessions were videotaped with the permissions of the participants. 10 internal Amazonian participants met with a moderator, me, one-on-one, for 30 minutes in a usability lab setting under NDA.
Insights & Opportunities
Key finding #1
Participants were asked to answer what they think the app does by looking at the App store download page, and then rate their interest level in downloading the app, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very interested, and 1 being not interested at all.
Key finding #2
Participants went through the user on-boarding questions, where they were asked to answer the questions as if they’re answering for their own home. 8 of 10 participants rated the experience as “very easy”. 2 of 10 participants rated “easy”.
Key finding #3
Participants need additional information to provide context for their score. Examples mentioned are score range/scale – what is 612 out of? How is it calculated.
Key finding #4
8 out of 10 participants mentioned it would be helpful if they can be reminded by the app with home activities.
Key finding #5
8 out of 10 participants reacted somewhat strongly to the neighborhood comparison or didn’t understand what their score is compared against
Key finding #6 - 10 out of 10 participants think their score can be improved by taking more actions.
Video clips of insights
Background
“I haven’t seen other apps like this…to see a score of my home, like a credit score”
“this comes from the questions I answered, so maybe buying another fire extinguisher, or creating a fire escape plan would improve my score…and I see these tasks that are probably related to that score, if I completed the task, it might probably improve the score”
“I am a little concerned that it might overlap with solutions I already have, so I would be interested in knowing what it might provide in addition to an app I have that provides similar experience.”
“I would want to know what the maximum rating (score) is…cause if you’re trying to attain a higher score, you want to know what the cap is”
“I am still kind of seeing this as we’re going to advise you on what products you need to buy to help out your house.”
“I would have expected it to be integrated into the app (Ring app), so the fact there is extra steps of downloading the app, which I may or may not use ever again. It just seems kind of silly to have an app just for this one thing."
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Background
Results
As a result, I was able to package this work into an end-to-end prototype demo, which helped the external insurance partners including Nationwide, Statefarm, Allstate and internal leadership to visualize the product vision of Project Thayer. The team was able to successfully bring three insurance partners onboarded to launch collaboration.
Background
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Background
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