Introduction
Ring is an internet-connected doorbell incorporating a camera. With the Ring doorbell device and its mobile app, the user can answer the door remotely with a live video and two-way communication, as well as monitor the events happening in front of the door.
Through the product research and user interviews, I discovered usability pain points of the door answering and design opportunities to strengthen the sociality between the homeowner and visitors. By sketching the design concepts and prototyping the final product, I explored and presented the solution of door answering in various scenarios with ease (lookback recording and prerecorded messages), as well as the smart interaction between Ring and visitors based on facial recognition (categorized visitors) and data-driven customization (expected visit from Amazon couriers and customized doorbell sound for holidays).
Contextual Research
The contextual research is to understand the landscape of Ring doorbell product and inspire my redesign by exploring the product ecosystem. The goal is to be generative of design, to help me discover insights and opportunities.
Primary Research
I have been using Ring doorbell for the past 3 years since I moved into my current house. The functionality of Ring is very straightforward, show in the user flows below.
My experience of the Ring device and its app is mixed.
Secondary Research
I did secondary research by looking through reviews for Ring on websites including Amazon, Apple App Store, etc. I took notes on what the reviewers liked or disliked about the product.
The competitor analysis is useful as well for me to understand what outstanding experience is provided by Ring’s competitors in the market, including Google Nest Hello, Arlo, and Eufy.
User research
Interview Questions
From the context research, a high-level understanding was developed around the product ecosystem, and then I conducted user interviews to learn about below questions I had during the context research.
- For people without a Ring, how is the general experience/pain points with the doorbell or answering the door?
- What behavior/habit has changed before and after owning a smart doorbell?
- For people with Ring, what do people like or dislike about this Ring doorbell?
- What is their experience with Ring Neighborhood? Is it for security, fun, or both?
The questions I designed can be used for interviewees with or w/o experience with smart doorbells. Most of the questions are unstructured to gather insights quickly. For a detailed list of interview questions, please visit the slides here.
Rapid Interviews and an In-depth interview
I conducted 8 rapid interviews with each lasting 15min and an in-depth interview for an experienced user for 1hr. For detailed interview notes, please visit the slides here. Below list the major feedback from the interviews.
- Remotely answering the doorbell is very convenient, but there can be some improvements to the connection faster and support different scenarios (e.g. not convenient to talk right now).
- Tracking delivery with the smart doorbell is useful, but there can be some improvements to make the delivery easier (e.g. alcohol delivery needs id, some packages require signature).
- Motion Detections are noisy and some refinements are necessary to make it usable.
- The historical events are miscellaneous and not easy to find the one of interest.
- The Ring Neighbor community is good to have for both fun and security, but the level of information and interactions is still low.
I then made a list of HWM (How Might We) questions for each design opportunity area. As a frame of innovative thinking, a HWM question suggests that a solution is possible and can be answered in a variety of ways.
- HMW makes it easier to explore the historical events to find the one in the user’s interest?
- HMW guides the user to practically use historical events when something abnormal happened?
- HMW makes the notifications less frequent with higher quality based on user need?
- HMW makes motion detection more accurate with more useful info?
- HMW show more insight in the notification summary?
- HMW makes it easier to answer the smart doorbell in different scenarios (e.g. when the internet connection is slow OR when the baby is sleeping OR when the homeowner is busy at work)?
- HMW provides more context before/when the user answers the doorbell?
- HMW makes package delivery easier in certain scenarios (e.g. knowing the package is delivered on time or making the delivery person feel better with his/her own experience)?
- HMW consolidate the community with more data insight, security, and fun with Ring Neighborhood?
- HMW makes users feel more connected with other users?
- HMW integrates AI into the Ring to make it feel smarter, such as object recognition?
- HMW provides the user with the control of the level of AI used in the product?
Opportunity Framework
Based on the above researches, I was able to conduct a convergent analysis to derive the design insights and opportunities from the research data. With the opportunities in the form of How-Might-We, I did a good amount of sketches to explore the solutions in a divergent manner.
The below opportunity framework describes how the potential design opportunities can be derived from the 6 groups of insights.
Design Insights
Design Concepts
As a divergent exploration, I sketched around 80 design concepts for anything I can think of to solve the above HMW questions. They range from small changes on top of the existing design to solve user pain points, to complete renovation of the device to bring in new interactions between users and the system. Please visit the slides here.
Converge to Best Opportunities and Concepts
I slept over the concepts after sketching them and took a look the next day to converge to the best ideas and opportunities for design refinement.
The biggest pain point hurting the usability of Ring is to answer the doorbell in non-ideal situations (homeowner busy at work, slow internet, etc.), while it is also the innovation of doorbell answering experience that brings more sociality and meanings in a closer neighborhood.
In the next and final phase of prototyping, I chose to refine the ideas of doorbell answering experience, between the homeowner and the system, as well as between the homeowner and visitors.
Storyboards
Storyboards help illustrate the context where the user will interact with new design concepts. The underlying stories clarify the key features to be prototyped.
- Answer the door remotely
- Person recognition
- Connect with friend
- Customized doorbell sounds
- Show your gratitude
User Flow
Based on the storyboard, I created a flow chart of the app’s new architecture that presents the user’s interaction with the redesigned system. The chart illustrates the experience of the homeowner, the visitor, as well as the friend sharing the device.
Site & Function Map
- To prototype the functions mentioned in the above storyboards and flowcharts, I organized my redesign in four tabs of the app (the Community tab is untouched).
- To support answering the doorbell in different scenarios, the Live Video tab is redesigned, along with “Recorded message” under the Settings tab to support pre-saved messages.
- To facilitate the interaction in the community, we let Ring recognize faces to interact with visitors respectively, and a new “Visitors” tab is added to support categories of familiar faces.
- Through the “Expected upcoming visits” function in the Event tab and other features such as “customized doorbell sound” and “sharing device with friends” added to Settings, the new design improves the quality of interaction and sociality between the homeowner and the visitors.
Prototyping
Style Guide
Before producing the prototype, I would like to work on some style guides to help me prototype with more style consistency. The primary color is blue, following the blue halo around Ring’s bell button.
High Fidelity Prototype
The high fidelity prototype focuses on the UI details and interaction process. I illustrated the flows, including:
- The options of answering the bell, including contextual live video (with contextual recording before the user opened the live video) and pre-recorded voice messages (for a quick reply when not answering in person).
- User settings, including Recorded Messages for a quick reply, Familiar Faces for advanced and smart interaction with visitors, and Devices for sharing the device or changing the device configs like the doorbell sound during holidays.
Also, you will be able to find the full interactive demo of the high fidelity design on this InVision page.
