Project Vision
SafetyHood is a dedicated mobile app and responsive mobile web app. It encourages updating and monitoring the status of smoke detectors.
Challenge
Design a way to help communities ensure all residents have (working) smoke detectors
The National Fire Protection Association states that:
“Smoke alarms fail most of the time because of missing, disconnected, or dead batteries.”
“Each year, 3 out of 5 home fire deaths result from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms.”
User Research
Interviews
I interviewed five individuals of various backgrounds to determine the target user and their needs concerning installing and maintaining smoke detectors.
3/5 Users
needed reminders to change batteries,
reported interest in SMART detectors
suggested that financial incentives will motivate them to follow through with upkeeps and maintenance.
4/5 users
reported that they check and install smoke detectors
All users
currently utilize old-style detectors,
reported that a top-down (authoritarian) approach to incentivize updating detectors would not work in this current political climate.
Competitive Audit
Auditing direct competitors provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address “designing a way to ensure residence install smoke detectors.”
Auditing indirect competitors provided insights into how ground-up approach of user inputs is needed to create an app that fosters data sharing.
DIRECT
INDIRECT
Weakness
These apps do not analyze status for a wide range of competing products
SMART detectors are expensive and rely on wifi working all the time
There’s a lack of versatility between web responsive app and mobile app.
Opportunities
Create an app that analyzes many products to meet edge case users
Provide details about different types of products and discounts.
Improve versatility between web-based and dedicated mobile app
Ideate
I developed ideas for addressing gaps identified in the competitive audit.
My focus was explicitly on the challenge of ensuring smoke detectors are installed in each residence.
Information Architecture
The red-yellow quadrant is a sequence structure prioritizing the main user path which is also used in the dedicated mobile app.
The blue-green quadrant is a hierarchy structure that considers the user case of education and information gathering.
Design: Wireframes
I used the Lofi Prototype when conducting the usability study. The user path includes updating two smoke detectors and an insurance plan.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Study
The moderated usability study consist of five individuals across North America. The findings include updating two smoke detectors and an insurance plan.
Findings
Affinity Map
Refining the design
Labeled progress bar
Reduced the number of steps when adding the first detector.
Removed the prize” incentive but keep the insurance discount incentive.
Prototypes
Dedicated Mobile App
Responsive mobile web app
Style Guide
I created a “sticky sheet” that includes interactive components for expediency in designing the dedicated mobile app.
Takeaway
All users expressed that the user flow was intuitive and that they “would consider using this app to earn insurance discounts”
The home page and its imagery is a “powerful call to action”
The app provide a user driven method to meeting the goal of helping communities ensure all residents have working smoke detectors.
What I learned:
The app’s focal point evolved during the UX research phase. The insights made an app different from what I had anticipated: designing the app with a top-down approach via city officials (fire-fighters, community leaders).
Skills:
I have a solid grasp of using constraints and auto-layout tools for better design for a responsive web app.
I also challenged myself to create interactive components (variants) for this case study.