FordPass Apple Watch
Many users of FordPass had adopted the Apple watch and wanted a way to access basic vehicle functions quickly and without having to unlock their phone and open the FordPass app. By creating an app for the Apple watch, we had a unique opportunity to not only increase convenience for our customers, but to also increase user interaction as well as social awareness of new technology being offered by Ford.
The Problem
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Approximately three months to complete high fidelity designs with complete user flows and annotations.
THE TEAM
The team consisted of a creative lead, as well as an art director, solutions delivery manager, product manager, and UX/UI designer.
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KEY GOAL
To design an app for the Apple watch that would allow an existing FordPass user to access basic functions of the mobile app.
My Role
I worked as part of the team responsible for delivery of the Apple watch solution. I collaborated with a Product Owner and Feature Owner from Ford to design the UX/UI for the app.
I conducted research to determine specifics about the users of a watch how their interactions differed from those of a mobile app user. Additionally, I created user flows for the app, which were translated into low fidelity screens and presented along with annotations to the product manager for preliminary approval.
I then worked with an art director to create high fidelity screens and presented the completed screens along with annotations for product manager and feature owner approval. These were then presented by our creative lead for L3 and L2 approval within Ford.
Understanding The User
The users of a watch app have different expectations than those of a mobile app user. This is true even if the two users are the same person.
Originally, when this project was started, the focus was to give the watch app as much functionality as possible. This proved to be problematic as the screen size and controls on a watch are very limited compared to a mobile device. The other issue is that the reason a user chose to use the watch is because they had limited time, this means they needed to complete their task as quickly, and easily as possible. Users did not expect to have all functionality in a watch app, they simply wanted access to the handful of functions that they used the most. In reality, our users were using 10% of the features in the app 90% of the time.
This lead to the realization, that the watch app only needed to offer the features in that 10%.
Defining the process
Following the research phase, I mapped out the functionality that the user would use 90% of the time. The two features required were locking and unlocking the vehicle and starting and stopping the vehicle.
Once the functionality was defined as well as the setup process to sync the watch app with the mobile app, I was able to map out a user flow which is shown below.
Wireframing
Referencing the user flow and functionality requirements, I began the process of creating basic wireframes of the screens.
One variation that came up was that not all vehicles were capable of being remotely started. Vehicles with a manual transmission cannot be remotely started even from a key fob. Fortunately as of 2016, fewer than 3% of vehicles sold were equipped with a manual transmission. I designed different screens for the few specific vehicles that could not be remotely started.
High fidelity
Below are a series of final high fidelity screens depicting several steps in the process including activating the app, selecting a vehicle, and interacting with the vehicle.
Deliverables
Sample of annotations:
Prototype video showing use:
Learnings
Targeted experiences
User interactions with Apple watch are different than mobile apps. Researching how users interact with different devices ensured that we were meeting user expectations and needs.
Understand capabilities early
We did not have clear definition of all available capabilities which would have been discovered earlier by involving development at the research stage.