the team Product Designers, Design Manager, User Researcher, UX Writer, Product Manager, Product Owner, and Engineering

timeline November - December 2022

tools I used Figma, Principle, FigJam

my role I owned and delivered Location-related components. I contributed to 1) the holistic notification framework, 2) defining user goals, scenarios and flows, as well as 3) owning interaction design and visual design of Location-related notification components.

 

Project context

Overview

Verizon Smart Family is a native mobile app that offers location sharing and parental controls for family members. As a premium feature, Location Sharing allows family members to track real-time location, save places and set up geofencing alerts.

However, customers’ loss of trust and lack of unique value have led to increased churn. Part of the large redesign effort, I delivered the new Location Sharing experience. This case study focuses on the notifications and alerts part of the newly redesigned experience.

Targeted users

3 key learnings about our targeted users from the discovery research:

  • They are working parents with a busy yet relatively consistent schedule each day.

  • They are modern parents who tend to give respect and trust to their children; meanwhile, they want to ensure children’s safety both online and offline.

  • Each child is different. Parents have different concerns and children require different levels of monitoring.

With the user behavior and expectations in mind, I identified an opportunity to improve the notifications experience.

 
 
 

Establishing a framework

In order to handle all notifications and alerts consistently across the app, we needed a holistic framework.

List of notifications, alerts, error states and edge cases.

01. Audit

Use cases

I gathered all use cases where a notification is required in the Location experience. This includes error states and edge cases.

Delivery methods

Currently, the app delivers messages via push notification, in-app banner, in-app dialog, SMS and email. Each channel has its place, and some are more suited to specific use cases than others.

 

Grouped by triggers

02. Initial grouping

After listing out all the messaging use cases, I grouped them into categories by triggers and drafted what the notification may look like (i.e., “Crash detected for Troy 1 minute ago at 123 Main Street“). This helped us roughly assess the impact and urgency of each message.


 

03. Define priority

I used a priority matrix where each message was evaluated based on their negativity and urgency (time sensitive, action-required etc). 

 

04. Determine the right way to notify users

It became clear that all Location-related notifications and alerts fall into one of the four categories, and each requires different delivery methods.

  • Emergency: push, in-app pop up, SMS (optional)

  • System feedback: Contextual in-app banner (triggered when the function user is interacting with is affected)

  • Action items/real-time updates: push, in-app

  • Noteworthy events: push, in-app, email summary

While it was an easy design decision regarding the Emergency and System Feedback notifications, in order to better define and design the in-app elements for Noteworthy events and Action items, I partnered with other designers to further explore this.

 

Ideation

We’ve ideated and explored the following concepts: super map module, global banner, notification center, action center to find the right balance.

We’ve achieved a happy medium which features a notification center and a dynamic map module. It met both user goals and our development timeline.

  • Notification Center is an all-in-one place for action items and noteworthy events. The hypothesis was that, this page should accommodate a decent amount of the messages without overwhelming users. We planned to use post-launch usage analyst to determine whether a stand-alone Action center is necessary.

  • Dynamic Map Module shows an at-a-glance overview of all family locations, and any active pickup request and update will be reflected on the map.

 
 

MVP Delivery

 

My learnings

01. Holistic design approach

Notifications are more than just banners or snack bars. In order to capture user’s attention at the right time in a right way, it requires me to think and design systematically. This means taking into consideration the environment (online vs offline) and specific scenarios (using the app vs out of the app) where a user may be in. Also, establishing a notification framework for the MVP allows the team to consistently handle new notifications/alerts as the product grows and scales.

02. It takes a village.

All designers have closely collaborated with each other in order to create a cohesive notifications and alerts experience. Each of us took full ownership of a feature set, and was able to contribute knowledge to the process of building a purposeful messaging system for the app as a whole.