Artifact data is intentionally blurred

SMART WATER MONITORING SYSTEM
My Role: User Researcher and Strategic Designer
Project Duration: Four Months (2019)
Client: [confidential]
Methods: Cognitive Walkthrough, Contextual Inquiry, Kano Model Questionnaire and Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Thematic Analysis, Experience Mapping
Output: Findings and Recommendations Report
Synopsis: Balance was approached by a company with a desire to enter the smart home/IoT space. As a plumbing company, the product they were interested in entering with was a smart water monitoring system. In order to understand the experience of an IoT homeowner, I was made the project lead to help map the user experience between eight stages in the customer journey: trigger, research, purchase, estimation, installation, setup, usage and maintenance. The final output was a list of 13 prioritized recommendations for the digital and industrial product.
Interviews
The process followed a semi-structured interview technique that includes the following methods to elicit the information needed to develop the design tools outlined in this document.
Cognitive Walkthrough: A method that had the participant recount their experience with the DRiY system from trigger (what made you decide to get the device) through detailed usage of the product.
Contextual Inquiry: A method where the researcher shadows the participant through their experience with the installation, setup and initial usage of a water monitoring product (competitive products Phyn & Streamlabs).
Kano Model Questionnaire: A highly structured questionnaire to help understand the perceptions and prioritization of future features of the system.
This project included 18 Remote Interviews including 8 homeowners, 4 property managers, 6 plumbers.
This project also included 3 Contextual Inquiries with 3 homeowners to watch the entire experience of installing and using the product first hand.


Competitive Assessment
A competitive assessment was conducted to provide the team a baseline understanding of the water monitoring space as well as how the market supports key features of the product and the needs of its users and installers. It provides valuable information that can help identify opportunities for our client to more aggressively compete and/or differentiate from current offerings.
Findings from the competitive assessment were used to inform the final recommendations for this project.

Personas
Example
Based on the interviews/workshop we set up three personas. We referred to them throughout the entire product development process.
Role-based personas were the method selected so that we could focus on key interactions that take place between users throughout the product journey. These personas were created from patterns found throughout the user interview process.

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Customer Journey
Example:
To understand how customers find and interact with the service we created a Customer Journey Map. The map included the different phases of the journey as well as discrete “thinks”, “feels”, and “dos” for each phase. The journey maps were framed through the perspectives of the personas.
Project Research Report
The final output from this project was a research report with 13 prioritized recommendations for the water monitoring system. I presented this report to a team of executives from our client. The presentation and findings were very well received.