Neosensory Mobile App
Connecting users with a world they can experience
At Neosensory, I had the opportunity to help our users experience the world in a new way. We developed the Buzz® wristband to help the hard of hearing experience sound through vibrations on their skin. I worked alongside a team of scientists and researchers. The company has made an incredible impact on this demographic. During my time there, Neosensory expanded its user base by offering features outside its original offering - Efforts I am proud to have contributed.
Hearing stats from NIH
Why Neosensory?
I joined the company very excited to design for the disabled community in the wearable space. I took over the initial mobile design file and hit the ground running. I leveraged brand language and applied it to new features/designs. We followed a roadmap of new features the team wanted to launch, and I led the design effort for all new features after the initial launch.
The technology was super interesting! It was amazing that people could interpret sound patterns through vibration and begin to understand the vibrations as speech. The team started with a wearable vest and then transitioned to a wristband for easier use and wearability.
My role and responsibilities:
Mobile Application - Lead Designer iOS and Android. Alarm, Tinnitus Therapy, Profiles, and Training Games features
Mobile design component library - Create a component library with documentation and a design guide
Brand Style Guide - Create structured brand guidelines to communicate with marketing and 3rd party agencies.
Email Template Creation - Created email templates on a CMS for customer-facing communications.
Creation of marketing materials for social media, email, and print
Updates to consumer packaging designs
Testing and research - Helped with testing of the application regularly and assisted with research plan and execution.
Profile Selection and Tinnitus program
Tinnitus program final screens
New feature or new app?
Profile selection opened the App and Wristband to a new group of users. Initially, we targeted users in the hard-of-hearing community but realized that our device could help a broader range of people. By updating the algorithm of the wristband and UI of the App, we provided a therapeutic service to tinnitus sufferers that proved very effective - showing 87% of our users experienced relief after using our program.
Project Goals
Determine if we can add a related feature intuitively to our existing app
Gain an understanding of the different type of users and their behavior
Provide an elegant solution to our multi-profile paradigm
I worked on:
App profile selection and onboarding UX/UI
Tinnitus program onboarding UX/UI
Initial intake survey and progress tracking system UX/UI
Vector graphics
Research support - Usability studies with ten users onsite
Profile Selection and Tinnitus Thereapy
Kick Off
We kicked off the project assuming we could leverage our existing app to showcase this related feature. We wanted to use our existing app because the infrastructure that interfaced with our wristband was already there. We came up with the term “Profiles” to name the experience types in the app. The challenge was making an intuitive experience for our users.
Some bigger questions:
What percentage of our users will use multiple profiles in the app?
If users do switch between profiles, how often and why?
Are there plans for other profiles in the future?
Wireflows
Since the wristband would behave differently for each profile, we decided to have our users pick a profile during onboarding after they paired the device. We could provide an interface with more information about each profile to guide the user.
Wire diagrams we used for stakeholder approval
We became concerned that the user could potentially pick the wrong profile and have an unexpected experience. We decided to show specific onboarding to help educate the user on the profile they just picked and provide a way to switch profiles through the side menu. The reason we did it this way was due to the architecture of the firmware in the band.
Wire Flows showing profile and device management through side menu
Final Screen designs
Tinnitus profile onboarding and survey screens.
Interactive Prototype for Device Management (iOS)
Our users needed a way to manage multiple devices from one app. I frequently created interactive prototypes that provided:
Validation for user flows
Clear communication with stakeholders
A way to define interaction behavior to devs
What we Found
Through quick usability studies, we found a few issues that we could address. Some of these issues surfaced using a small screen for our prototype. Our research showed that a majority of our users used smaller devices.
When testing our device management experience, 70% of users were not aware there were more that two devices to choose from in the Previously Connected section. Even though there was a cut-off preview, users were not scrolling down to find other devices.
Layout of the connected device lockup did not convey current profile as expected. Half of our users failed to identify what profile they were in at a quick glance as they would look for that information on the list below.
9 out of 10 users went to “Buzz Settings” to try and manage profiles, not “Switch Profile”. The link was below the fold. We found that users desired the ability to switch profiles because the Tinnitus profile limited the sound awareness functionally when in use.
Some of the Possible Solutions I Explored
I explored a new layout for our connected device lock up, brining more content above the fold and potentially addressing the users need to easily see which device is connected.
Re-order list items in device overview based on user expectations that profile management needed to be brought up in hierarchy.
Removing the Tinnitus therapy feature from the app entirely and giving access to the sessions via a web link in an “other” section that the user could go to when needed.
Device management prototype
Sketches and Hi Fi mock ups of device management explorations
Outcome
It was determined the most reasonable solution for the moment was to simply change the order of the list on the device overview screen. It was low effort, high impact, and we saw almost 100% improvement in that interaction with our users. We launched the new feature, as a separate profile for now in conjunction with updated packaging and informational inserts. The product is now in the wild collecting data. We are very interested confirming the findings we had around profile selection frequency, and the experience warranting it’s own app. We are also looking into the data to determine if there is an opportunity to market the actual wrist band as separate products based on program.