B-hyve smart watering redesign

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.

1. The current mobile app requires a redesign to make the site look more professional, accessible and trustworthy.

1. To increase the B-hyve smart watering feature adoption. 

2. Provide clear instructions to help home owners fill out the most important smart watering details for all their zones.

3. Redesign existing smart zone detail icons.

User Research Phase

At my current company Orbit we wanted to understand how home owners use the B-hyve smart watering feature. I conducted usability testing with 10 users with the goal to find out the following:

1. How do home owners currently use smart watering?

2. What home owners like about smart watering?

3. What home owners dislike about smart watering?

4. Why home owners don't use smart watering?

5. What are users struggling with while using the smart watering feature?

6. How can we improve in the B-hyve app?

Synthesis & Analysis

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

1. I learned that 8 of the 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 home owners assumed that they only needed to turn On the Smart Watering toggle for the feature to water efficiently.

2. 8 out of 10 users complained about how difficult it was to read the small text throughout the entire application.

3. 9 out of 10 home owners didn't trust smart watering because the feature did not water enough their plants that home owners had to water manually.

4. Smart watering is causing stress to users because it does not water their plants like expected by the user.

5. 5 out of the 10 users mentioned that rain delay and wind delay keeps delaying watering schedules, and sometimes it doesn't even rain. 

6. Home owners don't know how “Weather sensibility” feature works and what it does to their timers. "Weather sensibility is confusing as hell" David Smith.

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

HMW

1. How might we help b-hyve users to get more predictable watering schedules when using smart watering?

2. How might we help b-hyve users fill out all smart zone details? 

3. How might we help users understand the Weather Sensitivity feature?

4. How might we help users to tune their smart watering watering?

5. How might we help users to trust on smart watering?

Smart Zone Detail complete User flow example.

Testing with users 

I test the design with 8 B-hyve users. I ask users to fill out their Smart Zone Details for each zone then turn On Smart watering.

1. All users were able to find and access Smart Zone Details to fill out their smart watering details.

2. 3 users did not take the time to fill out all the smart watering attributes for all their zones, they said they would finished it when they get home.

3. 3 users mentioned that it was annoying and time consuming to fill out Smart Zone Details (the same) for each zone, specially because they have the same Soil type, Plant type, Sprinkler type, etc in all their zones. 

Results

60% of users are using smart watering. B-hyve users actually take the time to input smart watering attributes information during onboarding for all their zones. 

Reflection

If I had more time on this project I would try to identify why 40% of the users don't use smart watering. There's still user complains about the "Weather sensibility" feature, due to inaccurate weather data. User get their weather data from their closest public weather stations. In order for users to get more accurate weather date they need a personal weather station.