Automation Module - Rules
iSmartAlarm App
UX / UI Mobile App
Challenge.
How could we help end users on home safety self-monitoring in a smarter and more effective way through our Smart Home Security App?
Background & Why
Hence, the ultimate goal of our plan is to improve efficiency and engage a smarter process.
iSmartAlarm provides smart home security products to help user self-monitor what's happening in their home to keep home safe.
Self-monitor is an affordable alternative solution versus expensive traditional home security, which requires users to take lots of extra effort as a tradeoff comparing with the professional 24/7 monitoring.
Work with.
Product manager, Engineers.
My Role.
I am an in-house UI/UX designer at iSmartAlarm, participating in the whole process of this project, from exploring ideas widely, reframing and narrowing down the problem with user research, coming up with ideas, sketching design & prototyping, to usability and finally shipping.
"I need a schedule feature."
User goal:
How do we help users control their smart home security system (our product) easier and smarter?
How do we decrease the required effort cost interacting with our system?
Creating an automation module increases interaction efficiency between users and our system, which easy users life.
Business goal:
Build an affordable smart home security system to make people's life easier and smarter with peace of mind.
Creating an automation module align with the vision of company -- Smarter to easier.
Who is our user?
Our current user who is using our products and smart app to keep their home safe day-to-day.
What do we hear from them?
Among our request collections, providing a schedule feature to help users arm/disarm their system ranked top 3:
"As a daily iSmartAlarm home security user, I'd like to have a schedule to arm and disarm my home automatically, so that my home can remain safe in any of my unawareness condition."
Finally, we picked up the most usable and useful scenarios, wrote down possible automation rules according to the capability of our system.
Explore possibilities & Sort by scene
We started brainstorming after digging deep with users' requests, writing down all automation possibilities, walking through user journey and user scenarios, card sorting use cases, and ranking the most doable ones by removing lots of nonsense automate rules.
Focus on the biggest impact through a user journey.
By walking through the typical user journey of the home security system, the most frequent and core user scenario is Arm / Disarm home through the keypad, keyfob, and mobile app.
Reframe the problem & Nail down
New
How might we help users to create a mode-switch rule to arm and disarm their home automatically?
How could we help end users on home safety self-monitoring in a smarter and more effective way through our Smart Home Security App?
Old
More than schedule:
Explore and Reframe.
Even a time-schedule function is most requested, we still need to step back, digging deep on why users need to arm and disarm their home automatically by schedule, and looking around to see other possibilities.
Mode-switch Rule:
Schedule and Geofence.
Based on the current capability of our products and system,
we decided to develop a schedule and a geofence rule (distinguish whether home or away by phone-shared location) at this stage,
to help users switch modes (arm/disarm) for their home automatically.
Speak the user's language.
Keep it simple - remove extra cognitive cost.
Display rules in an understandable way.
Schedule Buffer - "Remind me 10 min in advance"
Clear info hierarchy - Geofence by location trigger.
Ease cooperation - Participation & location-share permission.
Walk through prototypes:
2.
1.
