Watch Out! App

- Lead Product Designer and User Researcher -

Watch Out! is a mobile application designed to combat inefficiencies in the product recall process. Currently, many companies or manufacturers of products (ranging from automotive, household appliances, food, children's toys, etc.) do not know the final destination of their product or who actually owns their product. In the event of a recall, these companies are often unable to reach the consumer. Watch Out! serves as an intermediary service that alerts consumers of products they use that have been recalled and as a channel of communication between manufacturers and consumers.

Constraints

• Sole user researcher and product designer

• Thrifty user research budget

• Worked simultaneously in research, design, and product management roles 

• Worked simultaneously on other projects including nationwide Watch Out! Fuel pump rewards integration and business portal which allows businesses to send targeted rewards to users

Tools

• Sketch

• Illustrator

• Photoshop

• Invision

• Pollfish

• Zeplin

Process

1. Research - Surveys

2. Communicate Findings

3. Defining the Problem

4. Usability Assessment

5. Brainstorm Solutions

6. Product Concept, UI/UX, and Rapid Prototyping

7. Test & Ship

8. End Results

Real-life example: Our technology was able to identify a certain brand of peanuts that was linked with a salmonella outbreak and we were able to notify Costco to pull the package of peanuts from their Chinese Chicken Salad before it hit the shelves. 

There is great value in tracing recalls upstream to find the source of an outbreak but often times it takes weeks to find the root cause. The problem is that perishable products, like produce, are often consumed within the same week they’re purchased before businesses can react to pull products off shelves. At this point, an affected product would have already been consumed and the damage already done.

We realized that if we are trying to prevent the spread of recalled products we cannot solely rely on businesses to remove affected products- we need to be able to reach consumers directly and empower them with information. This was a massive, untapped opportunity that was underserved and ultimately led to the spinout product Watch Out!.

Watch Out! was originally designed to serve as a recall awareness mobile app with alerts that are tailored to the user. For example, if a user wants to 'watch out' for their 2018 Tesla Model 3 then they are able to add this vehicle to their 'WatchList' and receive all alerts relevant to the exact model they specified. Conversely, users can also add broad groups of products, like spinach, chicken, or strollers to their ‘WatchList’ for notifications.

Key Takeaways

1. 48% of respondents ranked recalls as a major concern (4 or higher out of a possible 5)

2. Consumers associate ‘recalls’ with: 

   1. Automotive Industry 

   2. Food Industry 

   3. Pharmaceutical Industry 

   4. Products (New)

3. The strongest early adopters: 

   1. Have Children or Dependents

   2. Own a Home

   3. Own a Vehicle 

   4. Have a Pet (New)

   5. Note: Over 83% of female parents and 80% of male parents that own cars are “Concerned” or “Very Concerned” about recalls. This is significant compared to roughly 48% of all survey participants who were “Concerned” or “Very Concerned” about recalls.

4. Consumers primarily receive recall information from the following: 

   1. Mail 

   2. News 

   3. Email 

   4. Phone Call (New) 

   5. Note: Awareness and access to the right information is lacking. Over 60% of Car-Owners have never heard about the Takata airbag recall. In the U.S., 69M vehicles are part of the Takata recall. The Takata Airbag recall is “the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history” (NHTSA). The overwhelming majority of people had learned about a recall via Mail (over 57%). However, when asked about their preferred method of learning about a recall, three of the top four preferences are digital: via Email (60.1%), Text Message (31.3%), and Mobile App (20.2%). 

The first survey gave us a more clear understanding of our early adopters/super users which also allowed us to create more in-depth personas.

Key Takeaways:

• Almost 85% of respondents with vehicles indicated they would download a mobile app that gave them rewards (including fuel savings at the pump). Of the remaining 15%, 13.5% indicated they would be interested in fuel savings if the discount was high enough.

• 62% of respondents confirmed they have searched for news regarding a specific recall.

• 54.5% of respondents indicated they have owned an item that has been recalled while 12% indicated they were unsure.

• 97% of respondents would share a recall alert with someone they know. 27.5% would blast recall alerts to everyone they know regardless of whether or not they know that the person has the recalled product.

• 72.5% of respondents were concerned or very concerned about recalls (compare this to the 48% of the general population that was surveyed for survey 1).

• Only 28% take their vehicle to the dealership. This underscores the desire for dealerships to work with a partner (such as Watch Out!) to drive more people to the dealership for routine service and maintenance.

The second survey allowed us to prioritize features and build around a core audience.

Communicate Findings

I created personas based on our findings from the surveys and beta user interviews as a way to consolidate and communicate some of the biggest takeaways to our team. As the product continued to grow, it proved to be a helpful reference to ensure design decisions were always based on our core user interests.

Assessment of the Current App: Usability Tests and Interviews

While conducting user research, I was also simultaneously evaluating the current application based on usability heuristics and user feedback. Does the current app addressed our new problem statement?

Watch Out! already had beta users of the mobile app. This served as a great starting point to determine the current value the product offers and would allow us to assess the current usability status to serve as a benchmark for comparing future iterations. To accomplish these tests, I sat with approximately 20 beta users to conduct usability interviews.

The abbreviated feedback we were receiving from beta users and internal team members were the following:

• Cumbersome interaction flow: Users can add products in multiple locations with no clear indication of where the added product resides.

• Unclear content: The app does a poor job of showing users which alerts are tailored to them versus the ‘view all’ section.

• Takes user out of app: The ‘more info’ section under the recall alert is not native to the app. Instead it takes users to the government source, conferring less value to the Watch Out! app as a primary source of safety information.

• Does not encourage sharing: The app does not allow alert sharing from the preview cell.

• No ability to filter or search: Making information accessible requires helping users find events they care about easily and quickly.

• Terminology and layout is not accessible: The app uses industry specific terms and structure to describe recalls and alerts, making the information unapproachable to many users.

Our team concluded that in its current form Watch Out! wasn’t sufficiently addressing the key needs of our target demographic. We decided to redesign the home tab, recall tab, and profile tab. We also began exploring the development of new functionality informed by user insights.

There is strength in numbers. For prototyping concept feedback, I pulled in as many team members as possible to showcase design solutions for each of the needs uncovered by our user research.

1. Create high-level user flows to minimize steps taken for each action

2. Develop wireframes

3. Assess, critique, and adjust wireframes

4. Create empty state experience, error messages, etc.

5. Explore visual design patterns

6. Experiment with different styles, colors, and typography

7. Transform wireframes into mid or high fidelity mockups

8. Create guidelines to help technical team understand visual properties like size, style, positioning, etc.

9. Build interactive prototypes for internal team and/or users

10. Receive feedback, repeat if necessary

This process was incredibly fascinating and yielded new features and a completely redesigned experience. The main goal was to simplify the experience greatly while also allowing the user to fully dictate how much content they'd like to see. I was able to create a more usable product by:

• Creating ONE place to view all tailored and relevant content (News, Alerts, Offers) in the 'Home' tab

  • Restructured content cells to feature images

  • Increased font legibility

  • Continuous scroll-style news feed algorithmically sorted based on the user’s location, previous article engagement, and top stories

• Creating an expanded 'Alerts' tab that allows users to dive deeper into all safety notices by category in Alert Feeds

  • Allowed for users to adjust what they see in the 'Profile'

  • Branding bonus: recreated government feed icons

• Creating a separate tab specifically for all offers in the 'Offer' tab

  • Highlighted potential savings

  • We moved away from the term 'Incentive' as this was not seen as a user-friendly term

• Creating ONE place for users to manage all of their product inputs in the 'Profile' tab

  • Included a standardized way to add products, vehicles, zip codes, allergies, and more