Monetizing the Home Awareness product.
My Role
Product Design Consultant — Secondary Research, Visual Design, Competitive Analysis, Contextual Inquiry, Wireframing, Product Strategy, Interaction Design, Handoff
Timeline
August ’23 - December ’23
Team
4 Product Design Consultants, 2 PMs
Tools
Figma
Overview
In Fall 2023, my team at Berkeley Innovation worked with two product managers at Verizon to monetize their Home Awareness product. Home Awareness uses WiFi-sensing and AI to determine and notify motion in your environment without using cameras.
Currently only available to a small group of users in the northeast, Verizon is planning to make this product available to all customers and expand to outside users.
INTRODUCTION
Through WiFi signals emitted through your router, Home Awareness can detect falls, intrusions, and general activity.
WiFi-sensing uses WiFi waves to detect motion and presence and then applies machine learning algorithms in order to facilitate advanced applications. Some examples include wave-to-open doors and automated light systems.
With 114.5 million Verizon users and 6.5 million Fios router users, Home Awareness is projected to scale to tens of millions of customers.
Because the current user group is very small in proportion to their customer base, there is a large opportunity for Verizon to expand Home Awareness, tapping into a vast market.
THE CHALLENGE
How might we monetize Home Awareness?
Our research revealed that users were unfamiliar with WiFi-sensing, which led us to question: why would they feel confident investing in the technology?
RESEARCH METHOD #1
Competitive Analysis
Researched 10+ competitors to understand how other industry players are addressing user concerns
RESEARCH METHOD #2
Screener Survey
Understood 150+ participants’ opinions on WiFi-sensing technology
RESEARCH METHOD #3
Focus Groups
Conducted 3 sessions with 12 participants to explore the concerns people hold regarding the technology
From our research, we created 3 different personas to represent the types of potential home awareness user: The Skeptical Suspect, The Curious Consumer, and The Excited Enthusiast.
KEY INSIGHTS
We learned that users feel apprehension towards adopting a new piece of technology
Privacy and data collection
Users are cautious when their data is collected and question where this information is going
Information security
Users need to know that their personal information is secure
Effectiveness and accuracy
Users question the relevance and effectiveness of protecting their home
CONVERGING
There's a mutual lack of understanding
After discovering three overarching key themes that concerned users, we wanted to understand how to build a solution that would solve their pain points. Interestingly, we found out that woven into the fabric of all three pain points was a central thread—lack of understanding.
Recognizing the significance of this common theme, we shaped the rest of our research and our ultimate solutions to ensure that we addressed and clarified the intricacies surrounding WiFi-sensing technology to instill confidence in the product.
PIVOTING OUR FOCUS
How might we monetize Home Awareness?
How might we motivate users to embrace Home Awareness?
We looked at the current Home Awareness website to understand what we liked and didn’t like, considering how the product was positioned and how a new user might feel about the product upon opening the page.
Based on our rapid ideation and research into competitors' websites, we identified six key sections to highlight on the Home Awareness website.
WRAPPING UP
Takeaways
There’s no one-size-fits-all design process
About halfway through the project, my team and I recognized that focusing solely on our original HMW statement wouldn’t yield the desired outcome. Although our initial goal was to deliver a product strategy deck, we leveraged our expertise in empathy-driven UI/UX design to pivot and refine our solutions.
It’s good to obsess over your craft
Because the duration of the project was pretty short and there were a lot of hoops to jump through surrounding approval, our team never received Verizon’s design system. Thus, we had to essentially make our own! This meant a lot of attention to detail, counting every single pixel, studying Verizon’s branding guidelines.
