My Roles
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Prototyping
Testing
Project Overview
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My client is a single mother in St. Louis, MO who had an idea for an app for members of the Deaf community, including Hard of Hearing elderly individuals. I needed to design a mobile application compatible with a watch that will alert users of danger, such as fire alarms, co alarms, and if someone unexpected is at the door.
The Problem
Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals need a way to be made aware of sound alarms and need a way to be notified of those alarms during the night while asleep.
Target Audience
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Deaf Individuals
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Hard of Hearing Individuals
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The elderly community (This includes 3rd party users, who will use the app on behalf of older loved ones who aren't tech-savvy.)
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Ages 25-85 years (Nearly 71% of those aged 70+ years have hearing loss)
The Solution
Create an application with a watch wearable that will alert Deaf users of certain alarms, the app needed adjustable vibrational levels that would wake individuals during the night.
The Process
This design sprint, like many, was heavy in research in order to see if this design would be feasible. I first looked into Deaf community forums to see what apps were already available to our target audience, this drove me to begin the competitive analysis of both successful and unsuccessful competitors. This helped me to see what user temperament was like as well as the voice of the users for user personas.
Personas
The Voices of The Users
After discussing the target audience demographics with my client, we concluded that the target audience would be tech-savvy younger Deaf individuals, older Deaf individuals, and of course, individuals who care for older Deaf or Hard of Hearing loved ones who aren't as tech-savvy. I created three user personas like this one:
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Leslie - Age 27
Motivations:
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Wants safety and to literally rest assured.
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Feels that they need technology for simplicity.
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Frustrations:
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Gets frustrated by long waits
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Anything tedious
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People who see deafness as a disability.
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Needs:
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Simple to the point
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Independence
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Innovative
Bio
Leslie pronouns they/them, is a student studying at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. They enjoy coffee at brunch and spending quality time with their family and close friends.
Competitive Analysis
What do the competitors look like?
Amp Me was not similar to my client's application idea at all, however like Alexa it gave confirmation of feature feasibility and helped me see different ways that I could sync multiple devices in one application.
Google Nest was leading in the competition. According to the scope of this project as well as in the eyes of our potential users, Google Nest was the standard.
Sound Alert was similar to my application, it tailored to our specific audience however it was nowhere near as advanced or innovative. This would cause a lot of work for their users in the end.
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I also took a look at Deaf Community forums to better view how the users see the competitors.
"I don't like Ring, it's trash!!"
User feedback from Deaf Community forum
User Flowchart
After getting an idea of the audience through personas, I created a user flow. Since the only user story, this application would have would be one of the users getting alerts that they would clear, for the user flow I decided to sketch based on the onboarding set up of the application.
Iterations
I needed to go to the drawing board to brain storm ideas in a free writing style, writing and sketching anything and everything that came to mind.
I also sketched up what inspiration I got from other apps that would be helpful in bringing my client's idea to life.
As well as fast iterations, like here in my Crazy Eights sketch.
Wireframes
I decided to sketch up wireframes for both the mobile and watch applications.
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Clickable Prototype
Low Fidelity
User Testing
Users went through the prototype under close observation via Zoom, in order to easily record each testing session. I had users click through the prototype on one device and use Zoom on another device so that I could capture facial expressions when pain points arose. Users were given a simple onboarding process to click through. Users were tested and scored based on three objectives; Ease of Navigation, Ease of Understanding, and Clarity of Content.
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I tested a total of 4 users of different demographics that overall represented the target audience. 
Each user had different questions or things that they briefly stumbled on. The second user scored 67%, they were confused by the purpose of the 
initial alerts and flow of the prototype. User three suggested that I take out the arrows in the Manage 
Devices screen that would take users to an additional page and replace the arrows with a toggle-like 
button. User 4 was confused by the "confirm/false" button feature, after a brief explanation the user had more clarity.
Summary of Findings
In conclusion, findings uncovered that this application:
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Had a 75% usability score.
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The onboarding process could go into a lot more detail to make it more clear for users from the start.
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There could be fewer screens the users have to toggle through.
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I could explain the "Home/Away" feature in the onboarding process.
Keeping in mind that this was a sprint, plans for development included:
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Applying the summary of findings and usability test insights to improve the app.
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Additional testing
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Branding & logo
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High fidelity prototype
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Accessibility testing
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