January 2013 – July 2014 (on and off) – Melbourne, Victoria & Sydney, New South Wales

My Employer: Deloitte Digital (Sydney & Melbourne, Australia)

Background

I was lucky to work with the Telstra Digital team on and off during 2013 and 2014, completing a number of projects with them. I worked on the 24×7 app through several iterations, working on iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android (mobile and tablet), Windows (mobile). The 24×7 app was designed to enable Telstra users to monitor the usage of all of their services, pay their bills, recharge pre-paid services, purchase add-ons, and other self-management functions. I also completed two mobile web projects, whereby I was the sole UX and BA, launching prepaidrecharge.telstra.com (giving the users the ability to recharge their pre-paid phone, whether they were on the Telstra network or had the SIM installed or not), and refreshing m.bigpond.com/mpm (a mobile web version of the 24×7 app, which had additional functionalities of subscriptions to services and more purchases. This is only accessible on a Telstra SIM on the Telstra network).

I will outline my last project with Telstra, involving the 24×7 iPhone app, and beacon technology.

The Brief

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, wanted to harness beacon technology in their most popular Sydney store, on George St. The beacons would detect when a user with the 24×7 app downloaded on their iPhone had approached the Telstra store, and, based on trading hours, would assist a user either check in or create an appointment booking. Users with an existing booking would be greeted and checked into the system upon beacon activation; while users without a booking would be asked if they wished to make one, and be placed in a queue. The goal was to reduce the waiting time for both sets of users, while still creating an atmosphere of personalisation.

My Role and Process

As the UXer on the project, I began my research by looking at other apps that utilised beacon technology; particularly the Apple Store app, which also conducted an appointment check-in/booking process. As iOS7 had now been released for a few months, and more apps were now being refreshed to the new styling, I was able to do a lot of pattern research and find the UI elements that I needed. Being an activity of a temporary nature, and being a part of an existing app, I made the whole process flow within a modal, with the happy flow, and various edge case scenarios and errors.

I began to wireframe the screens in Axure, and worked closely with the business analyst and product manager to ensure I was capturing the experience correctly, and that the solution was technically feasible. I also considered when a user approaches the store after trading hours, creating a screen whereby they are informed of when they can return during trading hours, and/or book an appointment.

When the user enters the store with a pre-existing appointment, this flow will show

When the user stands in front of the closed store for a few seconds, they will see this flow (while still in location)

Challenges During the Project

The app created a few push notifications throughout time the user was detected by the beacons. These ranged from advising that the store was closed, recognition of entry to the store, to queuing information. Since these were all time-dependent and contextual, I needed to look into how the use case of a user not seeing the notifications is a timely manner. I worked with the iOS developer on different solutions, including if we could expire the notifications after a period of time, or when they exited the beacon range, or if we were to keep the notifications, what would happen if they were tapped on. I decided to not expire the notifications, as that would be diminishing a user’s action, as well as it being a good marketing opportunity for the company. Instead, I created a screen that would show if a user tapped on the notification after a specified period of time, thanking the user for visiting the store.

User has tapped on a notification while no longer being contextually relevant (post-event)

There were a couple of edge cases to consider, including when the user didn’t want to make an appointment, or when they wanted to cancel an appointment. The first scenario I covered on the first screen that showed up around the booking of an appointment, with a ‘I don’t need assistance’ button clearly on the screen. While this wasn’t part of the happy scenario, it still needed to be clear on the screen that the user didn’t need to interact with this part of the app if they didn’t want to. The second scenario around changing or canceling an appointment was an activity I initially covered in the app. Users were able to change the date and/or time of the appointment, particularly if they were in a hurry, the queue was too long, or staff were running late. This feature didn’t make MVP; so I created copy to handle this situation, informing users to discuss changing their appointment with the concierge in-store. Another feature to assist with this that didn’t make MVP was a queuing number or timer system. The app would show you what number you were in the queue or your waiting time, thus determining if you had the time to wait for the appointment.

The user can opt to decline assistance when they walk in without a booking; screens with the timer and queue that didn’t make it to the MVP

Learnings

Being my first foray into beacon technology, I had a few learnings:

• beacons can make an experience quite personal – which means that there can be multiple user flows based on personalisation, as well as the concern of a user not wanting to interact with beacons
• notifications are timely and contextual – don’t make the choice for a user to interact with them or not – instead create different end-points for when the user does interact with them
• always ensure to have finishing screens for an activity, especially if the beacon-related screens don’t have a normal ‘home’ in the app – users then have confirmation of actions, and don’t have to dig through the app trying to find information. Push notifications at different activity points also help draw the user back to the beacon screens.

Results

The new screens were pushed live in the app October 2014, with the George St Sydney store being the pilot. A write up on the pilot of the beacons (and more innovations piloted also at the George St store) can be found on Beau Giles tech blog