be a field pro
Vivint Field Technicians use an internal, native app called Tech Genie to meet with customers and diagnose any security system issues. Field Pro is a new tool that lives inside Tech Genie. This area of the product was developed after studying issues in the field that were slowing down time spent solving issues.
As Lead UX Designer I conducted in depth research into how Field Techs solve system issues. I prototyped the different design directions, tested them with users both individually and in group settings, then designed the final product given engineering constraints.
client
Vivint
year
2019
my contribution
lead product designer
strategy & research
prototyping
user testing
systems thinking
product design
the team
project managers x1
program managers x1
product designers x1
engineers x3
the problem
Field Technicians do not have effective solutions for finding what is causing issues in the home. Because all of the products in the home (which can total around 20 products) all interact with each other, it can take a long time to solve. The current Tech Genie app did not have a proper solution, which caused users to use multiple online tools to find an answer.
Developing a tool that accurately illustrated the issues happening in the home is vital to improve time in the home and save the company dollars.
research & discovery
First steps were to go into the field with Technicians as they solved system outages in customers homes. Following them through the process of diagnosing the problem was critical in understanding how to produce quicker solutions. We also crunched the numbers to find how much time could be saved hypothetically per visit and the amount of money it would save the company is substantial. We ran that research by interviewing our Tech Genie engineers to understand where the product communication pit falls are.
high fidelity testing
The goal was to merge together the health of all the devices in the home with different network statuses into one view. Often times, different devices health can affect another’s. It takes time and experience in the field to even begin to understand how to interpret the individualized data. Technicians new that if we could code different system alerts to alert the user of possible solutions they could do their job more quickly and efficiently.
This first test was an attempt to merge the health and communication between the main panel, z-wave devices and cameras. As those are the products that can affect each other the most greatly. We ran multiple group testing sessions as well as 1:1’s with leads in the field.
delivered product
After compiling and organizing feedback there were a few key themes:
Technicians wanted to be able to remotely run a system reboot health check early in the day. Having an error report ready by appointment arrival time would greatly influence the actions that need to be taken.
Easy access to product health timeline details. This was an interesting discovery that would help the user recognize patterns in connectivity.
Calendar view for similar pattern finding.
While graphs felt appealing, they aren’t as helpful in quick diagnosis as previously understood.
goal surpassed
Our KPI was to reach an average of under 1 hour spent in a customer’s home.
Within three months of launch, we surpassed our goal of reducing average in house solving time from ~90 min to BELOW 30 min on average. Saving the company millions in time back.
