B-hyve smart watering redesign

OVERVIEW

What's B-hyve?

B-hyve is a smart sprinkler timer app that allows you to control or monitor your sprinklers from anywhere in the world with the convenience of your iOS or android device.

In 2023, I lead the B-hyve smart watering feature user flow redesign.

My Role

As the only designer on this project, I lead the design process to redesigned the Smart Watering Feature user flow.

Team

Eric Price: Product Owner

Jase & Michael: Mobile Developers

Timeline

2 Months

Tools

Figma

PROBLEM

The B-hyve Smart Watering App promises “smart” automation but delivers an unpredictable watering schedule experience, causing home owners to lose trust and abandon its core functionality.

CHALLENCE

The current mobile app requires a redesign to make the site look more professional, accessible and trustworthy.
No budget for user research.
Concurrently working on a different project to design a new look and feel for the B-hyve app.

GOAL

To increase the B-hyve smart watering feature adoption.
Provide clear instructions to help home owners fill out the most important smart watering details for all their zones.
Redesign existing smart zone detail iconography.

IMPACT

After I redesign the feature and test it with users, we saw a 90% adoption of the feature within 3 months.

User Research Phase

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Homeowners turned on Smart Watering but fail to fill out zone details.
8 out of 10 users didn't know how to access the smart watering details interface to fill out zone details for smart watering to work more accurately.
9 out of 10 homeowners didn't trust smart watering because the feature didn't water the plants, forcing homeowners to water manually.
Homeowners hired sprinkler technicians, and the sprinkler technicians kept turning off Smart Watering.
Homeowners want control of the watering and scheduling.

These are the designs used to conduct usability testing.

Synthesis & Analysis

During the synthesis of our findings, I identified some common pain points users experienced when using the current app.

I learned that 8 out of 10 users didn't know how to access the Smart Watering Details interface to fill out zone details for smart watering to work more accurately. These homeowners assumed they only needed to turn on the Smart Watering toggle for the feature to water efficiently.
8 out of 10 users complained about how difficult it was to read the small text throughout the entire application.
9 out of 10 homeowners didn't trust smart watering because the feature didn't water their plants enough, forcing homeowners to water manually.
Smart watering is causing stress for users because it doesn't water their plants as expected.
Contractors mentioned that rain delay and wind delay keep delaying watering schedules — and sometimes it doesn't even rain.

I presented the research to the team and continued with the HMW framework to generate design ideas."

HMW

How might we help homeowners to access to smart zone details?
How might we help homeowners fill out the most smart zone details?
How might we help homeowners to trust on smart watering?
How might we help homeowners to tune their smart watering watering?
How might we help homeowners and sprinkler technicians to get more predictable watering schedules when using smart watering?

Design Solution

Since homeowners didn't know how to access Smart Zone Details, I moved the Smart Watering toggle and Smart Zone Details entry into separate sections.

I also design a user flow to make it easy for users to guide homeowners to input Zone Detail such as Soil type, Plant type, Sprinkler type, Sunlight, Rainfall, Slope and Sprinkler Head Count.

In addition, I design the app in light-mode to make it more accessible outside in the environments.

Smart Zone Detail complete User flow example.

Testing with users

TAKEAWAYS

I test the design with 8 B-hyve users.

All users were able to find and access Smart Zone Details to fill out their smart watering details.
All homeowners fill out their Smart Zone Details for each zone.
All homeowners were able to successful turn On Smart watering.
3 homeowners mentioned that it was annoying and time consuming to fill out Smart Zone Details for each zone, specially because they have the same Soil type, Plant type, Sprinkler type, etc in all their zones.
Homeowners like the design update.
Homeowners love the darkmode.

Redesign

BASED ON USER FEEDBACK

I designed the "Apply to Other Zones" section to apply the same setting to other zones if the users wants it.

Results

B-hyve users actually take the time to input smart watering attribute information during onboarding for all their zones. On average, 90% of homeowners use smart watering.

Some sprinkler technicians kept turning off the Smart Watering feature for homeowners because they wanted full control of the system. According to sprinkler technicians, "the weather is very unpredictable.

Reflection

There are still user complaints about the 'Weather Sensitivity' feature, due to inaccurate weather data. Users get their weather data from the closest public weather station. In order for homeowners to get more accurate weather data, they need a personal weather station.

I think there's an opportunity to sell weather stations or soil moisture sensors to homeowners in the app.