Lively & Apple Watch Integration

Overview

A partnership between Best Buy and Apple to provide PERS (Personal Emergency Response System) solutions for the Apple Watch users. The PERS customers are typically limited by the service provider they use. By enabling Apple Watch, the Best Buy’s Health and Safety plan customers will be able to take advantage of the services with their Apple Watch.

Project Scope & Goals

It was a 6 months project from kick-off to launch ready. For the Lively app team, we’re tasks to:

• Enable customers to leverage their own device for their health and safety plan subscription.

• Enable service agent and support team to assist service customers' needs.

My Roles

I was in a unique position to contribute to the initiative in several distinct ways:

As an embedded designer, I was responsible for transforming the Lively app from a device-dependent app experience to be able to support 3rd party devices.

As the lead UX designer for the Health app team, I oversaw the digital experience for the Lively and the Link app users.

As part of the customer experience team, I provided the customer journey and the service blueprint, mapping out the end-to-end customer experience for the entire initiative.

Challenge 1 - Redesign Lively App Onboarding

The traditional PERS product thinking is that the safety service provided is tie to the PERS devices. This is reflected in the original Lively app onboarding flow. The original Lively app onboarding flow consisted of standard app onboarding features such as permission prompts and account verification. On top of that, a GreatCall device pairing was part of the app onboarding flow.

Device Independence

Lively app onboarding user experience was designed to support traditional PERS product model. I was tasked to redesign the onboarding in order to support Apple Watch integration. I worked with product and dev leads to evaluate the existing onboarding flow and determined the new flow:

• Prioritize account verification

• Consolidate permission prompts

• Separate device pairing

Usability study to confirm design changes

The onboarding design updates were significant. I advocated a usability study to validate the design changes. My role in the research work was not actually doing the research. But to enable the junior designer to have ownership of the research work from planning, conducting the research, synthesizing, and sharing out the findings. 

I worked with pm to prioritize research work over other design tasks. I maximized the research finding impact by showcasing design best practices to core team members as well as partners and stakeholders. In the end, the research supported product decisions through validation and risk assessment.

Challenge 2 - Apple Watch Onboarding & Setup

The Apple watch pairing and set up portion is a marathon of the team running into tech block, then design and dev pivoting for a workaround solution. Regardless, we were able to continue the development without missing timelines or sacrifice the user experience in most cases. 

There was one critical user barrier in the watch setup experience. That was adding an Urgent Response complication to the watch face. 

Customize watch face is a task that takes several steps to perform. And it requires the person to have good motor control to navigate the small watch screen real estate and the crown on the side of the watch. I flagged these potential friction points during the watch setup.

User Research that’s impactful at the program level

The research insights have proven to be impactful in areas not only for the mobile app team, but in-store experience, marketing, and customer-facing communications. My role during the watch setup & onboarding are: 

• In addition to designed and iterated in response to us running into development blocks.

• I communicated a critical user experience issue. I was able to get the green-lighted to address the issue by user testing and user interview. This is another customer experience win - better understanding of Apple Watch users, it has ripple effects and benefited many areas of customer-facing channels.

Understanding the watch usage with the intended demographics is critical to the success of the user experience. I communicated the urgency of additional user research and was able to get additional resources for the user studies. I was able to extract important user insights to share with the team as well as partners and stakeholders.

Challenge 3 - Apple Watch Safety call reliability

After complete the setup with the Lively app, Apple Watch is technically a PERS (personal emergency response system) device. User can reach out to their Urgent Response agent from their phone, as well as their Apple Watch. The program stakeholders raised concerns regarding the quality and reliability of making a safety call from Apple Watch. 

I addressed concerns from  stakeholders and partners on watch calling reliability: 

• Getting alignment on the definition of a reliable call.

• Identified and evaluated all use cases.

• Set expectations on feasibility and timeline.

customer education strategy

In addition to getting alignment on what the app team can do with the given amount of time, I also proposed a customer education approach that would improve the watch calling user experience. 

• Leveraged communication channels outside Lively app – agents, website, email, and Blueshirts.

• Collaborated with training center, customer support, and marketing on customer education efforts.

Outcome & Learnings

Lively app and Apple watch integration feature was launched as planned. During this project, I redesigned the Lively app onboarding flow. Which help to established the foundation for supporting 3rd party devices.