WAVETIME
A research project to learn how surfers find, share, and track information about weather and breaks.
Device tracker
A tool to help workers locate missing devices
THE PROBLEM
Customers who own Zebra devices in their work environments have voiced a problem where they are having trouble keeping track of “lost devices” or “misplaced devices”.
Store associates/device users can easily misplace a device in a large retail environment, can forget to return the device to it’s designated location, etc. This is actually a big expense for our customers as our devices are critical to their operational workflow.
Zebra would like to create a tool that enables customers to easily designate a device as lost, find devices using an application of some sort, possibly use other devices to fetch the lost device, etc.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
On going support for this product on off over 6 months
MAKE OF THE TEAM
UX/ UI - Me ongoing support role over 6 months
Developers
KEY GOAL
Support the team working on the product
understand requirements create and handover assets to the team.
MY ROLE
My role was to support the dev team working on the product.
I had calls with the team to understand the requirements before going through whatever UX steps I had time for and relaying my findings to the team for alignment. Then once there was alignment I used our design library to create the assets in sketch then handing over the designs to the team as interactive prototypes using invision.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Zebras devices are tools that allow people to do their jobs.
Our customers' workforce needs our devices, they are embedded in their workflow. However, not all of our customers have a device per person and sometimes their workforce is sharing devices. Even if they have enough they don't necessarily have spares and devices need to be recharged.
Imagined your job is scanning deliveries or stock take and you lose your device.
Not having enough devices stops workers doing their jobs. Our customers have reported multiple issues of devices getting misplaced and the fall out from this, in response to this customer pain point zebra created device tracker. Device tracker is a simple tool to help our customers workforce quickly locate a lost device.
Nico
"Without my zebra device, I can't do my job. The device's often get misplaced and sometimes we are forced to share devices. Its easily done, we cover such a large area and it all looks the same. Sharing a device is a nightmare for productivity"
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
I was given a brief by the product owner, after reviewing it I mapped out all my thoughts and possible features.
Then I pulled in some other ID team members and built on what I already had. I mapped out the user journey for the mobile and the web app.
I looked at existing products and mapped out my journey. Making note of what worked well, how I was interacting with the product and of the variety of user interfaces.
Then I created the first prototype combining feature I felt worked well In existing products in the market.
The features were
-
select a device
-
select a floor level
-
map view
-
step view
-
play sound
-
vibrate
Brainstorm
First prototype
Study of existing product
First prototype
LETS TALK ABOUT LIMITATIONS
LESSONS LEARNED
I would need to move forward using sound and distance alone.
I presented the idea back to the team, despite good feedback it became apparent that given the time till first release and technical restrictions the map view was not a viable option. The development team has a certain amount of time allocated to different requests so we had to work together to strip it back so it was a phased approach. Below is an outline of the phases and the evolution of the design.
PHASE 1
The first release featured a pulsing radar style tracker that indicate distance.
The colour changed from green to red if the user started moving further away from the target. It showed the distance in feet and contained the play sound feature.
Use case - happy path
-
The user chooses device
-
user hits play sound button
-
user walks towards sound using the distance feature/ colour for positive reassurance
-
User repeats steps 2&3 until they get to device
-
List device as found
PHASE 2
Feedback from first release informed us that the accuracy of the technology used to show distance wasn't good enough.
The decision was made to put that feature was put on hold.
The second release featured a pulsing radar style tracker that indicate distance (no listed distance)
The colour changed from red, to orange, to green to show the user started moving further away from the target or closer. It contained the play sound feature.
Use case - happy path
-
The user chooses device
-
user hits play sound button
-
user walks towards sound using the colour for positive reassurance
-
User repeats steps 2&3 until they get to device
-
List device as found
PHASE 3
After some further developments where made by the team, the distance tracker was put back on the table.
The pending release features a slide that indicates distance (far-close) as well as distance. This also includes the introduction of the signal icon an colour.
Use case - happy path
-
The user chooses device
-
user hits play sound button
-
user walks towards sound using the distance and slider for positive reassurance
-
User repeats steps 2&3 until they get to device
-
List device as found
Phase 1
