Overview
TP-Link Research America is a small branch of TP-Link, a hardware company, which launches smart home products, such as smart plug, smart bulb. I worked in an agile environment by collaborating closely with the product owners, project managers, developers and QA engineers.
My role included:
Took full responsibility on the wifi camera project.
Conceptualized design insights from user research.
Designed interaction for android and ios app.
CHALLENGES
Interaction for wifi camera is complicated.
As an intern, I was fortunate to be the main designer for the wifi camera project after one of the full-time designer resigned. Wifi camera is one of the most sophisticated products in smart home area since it supports various functions for users to interact with. Since there are a good number of functions available for users, the interaction between app and camera become daunting. In light of this, how to create a delightful experience that simplifies interaction become the challenge.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Tons of similar wifi camera are in the market, what can we learn from them?
I started to do comparative analysis to understand the competitive advantage of our product as well as to have a better understanding of users' needs. The selection of competitors is based on brand, price and popularity. Nest and Netgear are two American brands with high price whereas Xiaomi and D-link are Chinese companies which provide lower price camera.
FINDINGS
Competitors offer similar hardware specs, but create different experience on mobile app.
Based on the comparative matrix comparing different features in the perspective of UX, I noticed that competitors design the interaction in a different way. Some company have apps only for camera, some company have apps accommodating all their smart home products. For the former one, they create environment for users to control multiple cameras whereas for the latter one, they treat camera as a individual device in the product line.
Going into detail, the interaction for the live, two way talking and motion detection area features differed. For example, some company designed a dashboard for viewing live video once opened up the app whereas some company allowed users to see live in the device detail page. Some company made the two-way talking features salient whereas some company didn’t. Some company allowed users to set detection area via app and website while some company limited the feature only to website.
At this stage, I knew the different design options available in the market, I wanted to further investigate users’ need in order to consolidate my design thinking. Because of time constraint and resources, the next step I did is to examine app review from Apple App store and Android Google Play.
APP REVIEW
Why do we want to use wifi camera?
In addition to the 4 competitors that included in the comparative analysis, I read another 3 app reviews to formulate users’ motivation for using wifi camera. Also, I was able to identify users’ pain points and behavior while using competitor’s products. Though not being able to conduct interviews with potential users, from app reviews I was able to draw insights from real users’ experience.
Monitor
Users can use the app to see live of their home to monitor their children, pets or senior citizens to make sure their beloved ones are safe.
Security
Users would receive notifications when there was motion detected. The camera would record a short clip for users to check in the things that happened.
Communication
Users can initiate quick communication with people at home.
User Problems
Users didn’t want to be bombarded with notifications.
😀Users want accurate motion detection notifications.
Users were concerned that the interface is not easy to navigate in a true emergency situation.
🙂Users want simple and intuitive way to control camera.
Users would own multiple cameras at home.
😌Users want to easily see clips captured by multiple cameras.
Polish
Users can easily learn how to create areas with draggable dots.
4 dots design supports creating common quadrilateral, such as window and door.
Users can edit detection areas in live mode.
Users can add up to 3 areas to create more complex shape.
Highlighted two-way talking features
Users can easily initiate short communication with beloved ones or scare intruders out.
Extra features was organized and hide in more buttons to make layout cleaner.
One library allows users to view clips captured by multiple cameras.
Users can filter clips based on date and camera.
Since our app is for various smart home products, we designed the library as activity center to accommodate future products.
Reflection
As a reflection, I think the internship turned out to be very fruitful internship where I am able to hone my design thinking and learn several new skills. I realized that
Communication is of the upmost importance. As an UX designer, we have to articulate our design in a clear manner so our clients can understand and buy our concepts.
User experience builds on taking care of details. Users would not applause awesome UX because it comes unnoticed, but users would notice when something crash. It's the UX designer's job to dig into every nitty-gritty to make the interactions smooth.
Research is the basis of design. I think high level principle would guide the whole design process. Only by doing comprehensive and detailed research before start the design iterations so as a UX designer can really make a difference on the products.