Please describe your company and your position there.
I am the Sr. Product Manager of SimpliSafe.
SimpliSafe is a home security company, specializing in hardware systems and services.
What specific goals or objectives did you hire NineTwoThree to accomplish?
How did you find NineTwoThree?
Referral
Why did you select NineTwoThree over others?
How many teammates from NineTwoThree were assigned to this project?
2-5 Employees
Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.
923 delivered figma designs for full mobile app for new innovation team initiative. Based off our initial set of requirements, Andrew and his team conducted user journey mapping and created mockups to set the direction for mobile app.
Stephanie created a detailed project schedule to meet our deadlines, and continued to work with us to collaborate and iterate on our designs based off of user feedback from our alpha and beta testing. 923 leveraged our existing design language library and also created custom iconography and components to deliver a full mobile app experience for our ReactNative devs.
923 also helped us conduct user exit interviews to learn more about app usuability, gather service feedback and synthesize results.
Additionally, we have been collaborating with 923 on a webapp redesign. Our webapp had multiple sets of complex requirements, and Andrew and his team spent extensive time with us user journey mapping and conducting customer interviews to kick off requirements setting for the initiative.
What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
923 delivered a complete mobile user interface for a custom mobile app, complete with a working clickable prototype. 923 was rigorous with implementing the latest and greatest UX best practices, delivered to our specifications and on time, and helped us achieve over a 4 stars out of 5 on app reviews.
923 supported our internal milestone review process by delivering highly detailed user insights from consumer research they conducted with our users.
Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?
923 was extremely communicate and flexible with our program needs. We were able to establish a a program timeline proposed by our product manager Stephanie and her team for our initiatives, while 923 was also extremely responsive to support our fast-paced program and changing priorities.
Stephanie was always quick and diligent in capturing our open questions and action items each week, and turned around proposals to resolve our open issues to keep our program moving forward.
What was your primary form of communication with NineTwoThree?
Virtual Meeting
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Although we were not able to leverage all their services offerings due to having internal development resources, 923 was a small but mighty solution provider and collaborator. They can cover an extensive breadth of solutions across the product development lifecycle. They helped us go from concept to finished product for a custom mobile app in record time.
The team was always striving to provide high quality ideas, leveraging both creative, best in class UX recommendations and also injecting really interesting opportunities to use advanced technologies. Wherever we needed additional support during our design atesting processes, 923 was able to fill the gaps quickly and deliver high quality results.
Are there any areas for improvement or something NineTwoThree could have done differently?
None!
SimpliSafe's Pre-Crime Detection Service (PCS) operates by having human agents monitor a live feed from outdoor cameras when the system is armed. When the camera detects a person, its AI and facial recognition algorithms analyze the individual to determine if they are likely to be a stranger. This approach aims to allow SimpliSafe to take proactive measures to prevent a break-in before it occurs, which contrasts with traditional alarm systems that typically only trigger after a home's perimeter has been breached.
The product concept was born from SimpliSafe’s Innovation Lab and NineTwoThree was brought on board to collaborate with the Innovation Lab’s engineering and product team to build out the product structure and UI/UX design of the Android and iOS mobile apps, Live Guard Agent monitoring web app, and QA web app.
The UX/UI design created by the NineTwoThree team received a patent and is set to eventually become the new standard for the main SimpliSafe app as well.
Turning a Proof of Concept into Production Design: How to design and architect a new Pre-Crime service in a separate app from the main SimpliSafe app to allow them to validate the market and move quickly, while maintaining the eventual goal of merging the two apps together.
Meeting Business Goals with UI/UX: NineTwoThree’s focus was on developing onboarding processes, in-app tutorials, and a robust UI/UX to clearly convey the benefits of the new Pre Crime Service to both current and prospective SimpliSafe customers. It was also essential that our design communicated how Live Guard Agents monitoring works and set clear expectations for what the homeowner would experience.
Navigating Regulatory Requirements: Operating in a highly regulated industry requires adherence to strict guidelines and protocols. our teams worked closely together to ensure compliance with regulatory standards related to AI face detection and storage and handling of PII while delivering innovative security solutions.
We came alongside the SimpliSafe Innovation team to organize the early Proof of Concept app into an updated and improved user flow. Through in-person multi-day sessions we created a detailed plan together for the updated app and identified sections that needed design iteration rounds.
We created the Pre Crime Service logo, icons and elements after conducting market research to create strategically differentiated branding. We gave close consideration to competitor apps as well as aligning with SimpliSafe branding guidelines.
Our design process involved wire framing keys areas where we needed to do strategic rounds of design iteration to visualize different interaction design ideas. Engineering and product stakeholders joined meetings to give insight into implementation considerations and our team advised on industry best practices.
Since this app requires a multi-step set up that interacts with hardware, we utilized the design principle of “show, don’t tell”. Instead of overloading users with information, we strategically utilized in-app tool tips, action triggers, empty states to give users information as they use the app and lead them to delightful moments.
Our team created clickable prototype and recruited SimpliSafe customers for usability test sessions. Customers were asked to interact with the prototype and we were able to validate if onboarding effectively communicated the value of the new service, if it was clear how the PCS app would behave alongside their existing SimpliSafe app, and overall usability of the design.
After the beta app was live with 300 customers for 6 months, we conducted another round of user interviews to uncover opportunities for improvement. The interviews uncovered the motivation behind customer’s purchase of the PCS service, delightful experiences that we could continue to design towards, and usability issues causing user’s to not use certain features or understand the value of the service.
The patented UI/UX design and product architecture created by NineTwoThree was implemented by the SimpliSafe Innovation Lab engineers and the new Pre-Crime Service product and mobile app was launched live on the app store in May 2024.
Together our team were able to collaborate to increase sales, reduce operational costsand strategically differentiate the app from competition.
