With the success of eero’s first product, we sought to improve our existing work and introduce a new line of eeros. The First Time User Experience(FTUX) team came together and had a retrospective discussion on what went well and what could be improved for setup. Simultaneously, our brand marketing team was kicking off the rebranding of eero. They aimed to give eero a fuller, more complete visual language. Throughout this project, I worked closely with our senior visual designer, Delisa, to ensure that our setup redesign would incorporate and compliment the new brand and design system.
// Journey Mapping
// Competitive Analysis
// Data Analysis
// Brainstorm Facilitation
Since the launch of the first product, we had heard plenty of feedback from reviewers, customers, fellow coworkers, and beta testers. I worked closely with my product manager, Jack, on pinpointing the key issues our existing customers were having. I lead journey mapping workshops with stakeholders and the other product designers to gain insight into our user’s experience.
Jack and I also went through many of the setups for mesh routers that had newly come to market after eero’s launch. We found that many were similar to ours but we took note of what made some experiences better. Lastly, we worked with our data analysts and customer experience teams to figure out where our users were having the most trouble.
How might we empower our users to set up eero with more confidence and success?
• Improve pre-setup education
• Set clear expectations for the process and resulting network performance
• Increase engagement points to give users a sense of progress
• Reduce placement confusion
• Validate leaf and network connection strength
After doing discovery work, I started on user flows and wireframes. I focused on the areas we wanted to change and quickly incorporated them into an InVision prototype so that we could get the concept in front of beta customers. Through these first rounds of testing we found additional areas for improvement.
For example, we had thought of pre-setup education as giving the user more context into what to expect for setup. What we discovered was that users generally didn’t understand how mesh WiFi works. They were purchasing our product because they believed it to be the solution for their WiFi problems. We needed to educate our users on how eero works in order to achieve a more successful setup experience.
With that insight, I worked with my product manager to rethink pre-setup education. We tossed around ideas such as additional information on the packaging QSG (quick start guide) or an informational carousel for fresh download app users. We conceptualized on how to communicate things that can be very technical and intimating into something that would be approachable and easy to comprehend.
Another area we focused on was how to revamp the placement guide. When we looked at the numbers, we found that our users were not fully optimizing the potential of their WiFi network and running into poor placement errors. On top of that, our customer support channels were getting calls on where best to place eeros. We discovered that there were generally two camps of users; ones that followed the tips word for word and ones that didn’t read them at all. We also knew that everyone’s situation was different and people needed tips that were a bit more custom. In short, our tips were both too vague and too specific at the same time.
We explored various concepts, such as a questionnaire that would give users catered tips, or a do’s and don’ts list. While we really loved that idea of customizing each user’s situations through the questionnaire, I found that there really weren’t enough suggestions that would be different based on the user’s answers. What we ended up with was a combination of both those concepts. We reduced the questionnaire to what we called a “home selector”. The home selector allowed the user to choose a home that would be similar to their home. With that selection, we would give tips relating to that type of home.
With the new concept, we went back into our beta users homes for further testing. This time around, we observed the way people described their home and got feedback that the options for the home selector didn’t fit what they considered their home. We were yet again, being too specific and too vague. We went back to the drawing board. Taking inspiration from how users described their homes, we came up with the “home builder” concept. The home builder would allow users to select the shape of their home and the number of floors in their home.
Along with providing the users better guidance in placement, we also made little tweaks throughout the experience to decrease the users perception of a lengthy setup and to allow users to feel more confident after setting up. To do this, I added more touch points for the user in the flow and utilized animations to create a feeling of progress. I worked with our senior visual designer to storyboard the key moments in the experience and worked with the motion designers to create the animations. Below is a prototype of the final setup flow, created utilizing Principle.
My Role: Product Designer, Visual Designer
Senior Visual Designer: Delisa Lopez
Product Manager: Jack Breidenbach
Engineering Manager: Christoph Moskalonek
Mobile Engineers: Charlie Jacobson, David Cowden
Illustrator: Nick Slater
Motion Design Firm: LoneUX