My Spectrum App
Designed the residential advanced home WiFi network management feature.
Role
User Experience Designer
Features (SCP)
Spectrum would like to provide advanced WiFi features to their internet offering after lagging behind their competitors. By partnering with Plume.com, Spectrum is enabling a new Spectrum Connectivity Platform (SCP) to offer the following advanced features:
Self-Installation
A new customer must currently schedule an in-home professional installation appointment to connect and enable new internet accounts. By delivering a new SCP router with the new architecture from Plume, we are opening doors for customers to follow a few simple steps to install new internet equipment by themselves.
Spectrum Pods
By branding a new Plume's SuperPod as Spectrum Pods (similar to xFi Pod from Xfinity), we extend the WiFi network and help eliminate dead spots at the customer property for more consistent coverage.
Advanced Home WiFi Features
Using Plume API and a built-in chip in our new Spectrum router, we can provide advanced features for our internet customers, such as managing their connected devices, creating schedules to pause internet connections, and grouping their devices.
I was tasked with implementing the new feature set to our existing mobile app and providing an intuitive experience based on our stakeholders' business requirements.
Customer Journey
First, we attempted to map our current customer journeys for new customers and existing customers when signing up for internet services. We wanted to understand their current pain points, mindsets, emotions, and opportunities to solve their problems.
Let's zoom in to the install/activation and onboarding phases. As a designer for the MSA team, we can directly influence our customer experiences. We found that the installation and onboarding process is crucial to the success of this feature. Many things can go wrong, which can cause an increase in overhead costs by calling for in-person professional support instead. Hence, we must guide them step-by-step throughout the installation and onboarding process.
Fun fact: Because the process of getting a new software approved is not pleasant at Spectrum, we decided to use Google Sheet for our journey mapping effort.
Self-Installation
Previously, our professional personnel will have available internet equipment in stock, such as the modem and the router, ready for installation upon request. By moving it to the self-installation process, we can ship our equipment directly to the service address and guide them through the process. To demonstrate our design process, let's discuss the user flow (happy path) and customer journey through wireframing.
User Flow
When we received product requirements from our business partner, we started to map out the user flow when the customer attempt to self-install their internet and WiFi equipment. For simplicity, we are only showing the happy path. If you would like to learn more about what could go wrong, please visit our Axure link below.
Axure: https://es1rp2.axshare.com
Customer Journey
After mapping out the user flow, we used the product requirements to create wireframes to demonstrate the app's flow and represent the information on the mobile app. Then we make a customer journey using our wireframes to share our solution to stakeholders.
Axure: https://oz4mx2.axshare.com
Wireframes
Below are our wireframes for the self-installation process. As we mentioned earlier, we show the customers step-by-step, including pictures about the equipment, including cables and illustrations on connecting the appropriate line to the right port. Once they secure the cable correctly and power the device, we display the setup process with a loading indicator to communicate the status. Once the internet is activated, we ask the customer to repeat the process for their new router.
After the customer sets up their router, we will ask them to create their new WiFi network by adding a new SSID and password. Once everything is done, the customer can now manage their home network.
Spectrum Pods
From our partnership with Plume, we can white label their SuperPod (WiFi Extender) to Spectrum Pod and start offering it to our customer with a compatible Spectrum router with the new chip built-in.
Let's look at the information architecture of the MSA app.
Information Architecture
Our customers can currently use the MSA app to pay the bill, manage their equipment and services, and browse support articles. With the addition of Spectrum Pod, how do we display the Pod and help customers managing them? The information architecture is an excellent diagram to visualize it.
On the Home page, we will guide the customer on setting up their new Spectrum Pods through a self-installation process. After their Spectrum Pods are activated, they can manage them from the Internet section of the app.
Wireframes
For MVP, we only offer a professional installation for Spectrum Pods. However, the long term vision is to let our customers install themselves. By leveraging the self-installation process introduced earlier, this installation process is relatively straightforward with the additional placement tips to ensure optimized coverage.
When the customer is ready to install their Spectrum Pods, we can display step-by-step how to plug them into the wall outlet. Once the Spectrum Pod is connected, we show the connection's status and encourage customers to repeat the process depending on how many Spectrum Pods they ordered. They can also locate their Spectrum Pods by flashing the light and rename them from the app.
Finally, we communicate clearly to the customers that we require 24 hours to self-optimize their new Spectrum Pods before they can start noticing the greater coverage and speed improvement on previous dead spots.
Advance Home WiFi Features
Advanced WiFi features are available through Plume API from our partnership with them. These new features will allow our customers to view connected devices to their WiFi network, create a profile to group devices, and create schedules to pause devices or profiles. We can find similar features set from Nest WiFi or the Amazon Eero system.
Information Architecture
The feature set is quite complicated, and we were questioning the usefulness for our customer base. We are not sure if they will ever use grouping or scheduling features for the customers who are using our equipment. Regardless, we simplified our early information architecture to include Internet service only.
Axure: https://xtx5hx.axshare.com/
User Flow
Then we map out the user flow to understand how complex it is to create a group, create schedules, and apply these schedules to devices or groups. It is too much work to customize. The user flow is perfectly demonstrating the complexity of these features.
Axure: https://xtx5hx.axshare.com/
Wireframes
For MVP, we decided to allow customers to pause or unpause the connection to their devices manually. Hence, we create wireframes to demonstrate how these features will work on our MSA app.
Our research discovered two ways to display the information: List View and Node View. Below are the wireframes of the List View.
Node View is an exciting way to communicate how their equipment is connected to create a WiFi network in their home. Our customers have a more holistic view of their network. The Google WiFi app inspired this view.
After a round of user testing, we learned that Node View performs very well, but there is no clear indication that our customers prefer to one way or another. Given Node View's nature and potentially how complex it is to implement, we decided to implement our MVP with the List View.
User Interface Design
During last year, our self-service team at Spectrum went through a re-organization process, and we were not involved in the UI design and implementation process. However, we could pull a few screens from our UI designer, Matt Parris, to share our MVP's final product.
Summary
We enjoyed working on this project. It was great for me to focus on the UX process to provide an intuitive experience that makes sense for our customers. The development team just recently releases the scheduling feature, and the result is fascinating. We are tracking numbers of transactions on pausing/unpausing device manually vs. applying to schedule. The number of transactions for manually pausing the connection is 10 times higher than using scheduling, which proves our assumption of the scheduling feature being too complicated.
Case Studies
Hire Me!
Why consider hiring me?
Collaborative Approach: I'm easy to work with and won't take offense if my design isn't your cup of tea. I'm committed to falling in love with the problem at hand, not just fixated on a particular solution.
Effective Team Player: I actively engage in whiteboarding sessions, firmly believing that exceptional ideas emerge from teamwork rather than individual efforts.
Tech Enthusiast: I harbor a sincere passion and inquisitive mindset toward technology, utilizing cutting-edge advancements to create exceptional products that align with market demands.
Strategic Investment: Bringing me on board is an investment, not an expense. I enjoy mentoring younger team members, participating in product strategy discussions, liaising with the engineering team, and exploring cost-effective bootstrap solutions when necessary.
Do you believe I'd be a good match? Fantastic! I'd be delighted to meet for coffee or schedule a Zoom session to delve into potential opportunities. ☕️ 🖥
You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. 🤝
Danny is a passionate design leader who adapts to changes with an open mindset, owning a unique POV and vision toward new product spaces. He’s got a knack for navigating complex legal and technical requirements and translating them into the most intuitive experience possible. He steps in with graphic design and illustrations wherever they are needed.
Ariel Huang
Growth & Discovery Product Designer