Problem: Amazon released a new setup method called Amazon WiFi Simple Setup (AWSS). It allows Amazon Echos to quickly onboard smart home devices, like our Wemo product, to WiFi. The golden path requires very little work on the user’s end and no work within our app. Users can plug in a Wemo smart plug, and the Echo takes it from there.
Business goals
Take advantage of this new technology so that Amazon would feature us in their 2020 holiday promos
Improve setup of a Wemo product.
My Role: Lead the Wemo UX/UI team’s integration of AWSS within our existing setup processes
Define the Experience Goals
Working with PMs, the UX/UI designers on my team, and other stakeholders, I led the effort to define experience goals for this project:
Inform users about WiFi Simple Setup: Wemos that support it, how it works, and what’s needed to use it
Create a seamless Wemo setup experience that includes WiFi Simple Setup:
Onboard the Wemo to a network (the time it takes for the Wemo to be set up shouldn’t be significantly impacted by WSS)
Provision the Wemo to a Wemo Home/logical group (if a Wemo onboarded to a network with Alexa, Wemo app still needs to add it to a group)
Control the Wemo with Wemo App & Alexa (app-to-app account linking)
Frame the Problem for others to solve
I created high level flows of user journey. Then walked other team members through it in order to fill in any gaps, ask questions, identify obstacles, etc.
Then I broke apart different sections of the journey and turned those into stories for the UX and UI team to work on. The stories typically include scenarios a user will be in, experience rules to follow, and designers are tasked with future roadmap plans to keep in mind when designing solutions. Usability testing is required before most stories are considered “done”. The type of testing we do varies depending on the task.
Plan the work strategically
For efficiency, I worked with those on my team to identify multiple scenarios that can be solved with the same solution. It reduces our work, and also the work of our engineering and QA teams.
