Telstra Home Dashboard, Matisse

Telstra Home Dashboard is an app to manage home internet, giving users more control over their broadband performance, data usage management between users, self-diagnostics, notification widgets and getting insights and status for their account. Project Matisse is a proof of concept, it is designed to incorporate and enable the potential features of new technology, as an upgrade/extension of the current Telstra Home Dashboard mobile app, containing distinctive features that allows users to manage their connected devices and users. 

Mission

Telstra Home Dashboard team wants to provide options for their customers to control internet usage within their account or household, the target audience for these features are primarily parents who own and use multiple devices at home. Under busy daily schedules for work and family, they needed a seamless way to manage internet access for their children, without having to adjust the physical device or internet equipment manually. This project is to introduce these new features to an existing app that launched a year before.

Through previous research and data analysis, Telstra Home Dashboard Product Innovation team identified an opportunity to provide new features update, Matisse aims to provide efficient ways to manage devices and users profiles who are connected to the home wifi network, this research aims at validating this assumption by testing the design prototype.


Persona

The persona that we used in this project is Mary, who is a mother of 3 children, she is 35 years old, and she manages the family’s broadband account, her needs represents our target audience. The scenarios I used in the prototype is designed to suit her needs.


Pain points

A lot of kids love online video, gaming, or even social media, and parents want to manage the internet usage for their children, for example, turn off the internet for bedtime, but also allow them to access the internet for homework hours if the assignment requires. Currently, there isn’t a smooth and streamlined way that will enable parents to do that, and parents had been doing it by manually pulling off the physical internet connections from the devices, or taking the devices away from the children.


UX Design

The design has been built to satisfy the user goal of “Grouping” and “Pause Internet” for connected devices and users. This prototype formulated ways to manage the internet connection in a home/family environment, selected testing participants are users who don’t have prior experience interacting with Telstra HDB’s user profile, grouping and pausing the internet.

The end goal of this user flow is to allow users to pause the internet for a selected group. Hence it came to me that the most critical question was, how do users identify and categorise the connections at home? Do they approach it with grouping the user profiles or grouping devices? Or do they need both ways to manage their devices?


Insights and testing

During the ideation and research phase, we found that users may want different approach to identify and group the devices or user profiles. To find out which method would better satisfy the needs, or do we need to build both path, how do we prioritise development phase, I designed 2 different ways to access these features, so we can get a more comprehensive feedback about the 2 distinctive approaches, as well as weighing the pros and cons for each of the design approaches.

We conducted two rounds of testing for the prototype, which were Guerilla testing and Lab testing.

Guerilla testing

By getting insights from internal employees who share the same pain points in regards to internet usage management, we found that their needs align very much with our assumptions. Hence we had tested with eight employees. After the internal testing, I integrated their feedbacks and iterated the design prototype, to further capture more insights for the next phase of user testing with real customers.

Lab testing

Grouping device first: https://invis.io/AMS4D3VUCZ5

Grouping users first: https://invis.io/DCS4E4ER4XZ

In Lab testing, I partnered with a researcher and tested with technically confident, young professional and university student, parents who have children, and Senior, who are comfortable using basic technology, but not necessarily tech-savvy.

They are the primary person in the household who manages the account, including bill pay, owns or purchase the devices usage allocation, troubleshoots when the internet is running slow or not working.

The demographics included Young Professional (age 23-35), Student (age 18-25), Family Household (age 30-45) and Senior (50+), with a mix of gender (50% male, 50% female), they worked in a mix of industries.


Insights learned

After a few rounds of iteration and testings, we found that users liked the features tested, they seemed to be excited about the functionality and visuals representation of the prototype. They seemed to gravitate towards grouping the connection by user profiles within the household, and it had answered the questions we had during the process.

We had also spotted some insights outside of our project scope, which was around the Home Dashboard app over information architecture and navigation pattern. These additional insights brought me to have conversations with the design team, and a smaller discussion was started to create iteration backlogs to the project team, who were working parallel with Project Matisse. The testing showed that the new feature and functionalities design was able to achieve the initial goal; users were satisfied with the overall user experience.


Next steps

In the earlier stage of the ideation phase, I engaged with the product owner and solution architect of Thor technology, who provides the technology for Telstra to leverage the capability, identify devices, ability to create profiles and groups with a household. Through that, I acknowledged that the design is built upon the feasible technology and also satisfying user needs and desires.

I made the final version of the design and delivered as a UX design recommendation, with documented user flows, wireframes, profiles and roles permission settings, annotated design prototype. Project team could start planning for the development of the new features and functionalities designed in Project Matisse.


Thank you!