Spacetalk is a family safety company for all stages of life. We provide parents with the main Spacetalk app that can be paired with watches for kids (age 9 or below) and the Reach app for teenagers. If the parents paired with the watch or app, they can see where their kids/teens are. Spacetalk products comes with a Spacetalk SIM card and this is where we generate revenue aside from hardware sales. So Spacetalk Reach is the name of the app the teenagers use to be tracked by their parents.
After doing 1:1 video calls and several meetings with expert stakeholders within the company I can see that the main problem is that the downloads for Reach is very low and the download for the main Spacetalk app is also low. All stakeholders have their assumptions as to why this happens.
Onboarding is a huge pain
Onboarding is the main part of the problem as the customer need to go through 3 steps: SIM activation account, register Spacetalk app account, pair with their teen’s Reach app. These are all mandatory steps making the onboarding long and tedious
We have two apps which is confusing
Because of a backend code legacy problem we need to have an extension app instead of using one app. This confuses the users as some of them installing Reach first before the main Spacetalk app.
SIM card activation might be missed
The number of active SIM card is lower compared to the number of SIM card purchase. Which means potentially SIM card activation is is not done somehow.
Dead mobile SIM accounts
According to the analytics we have a lot of dead mobile SIM accounts. Which means people did not finish their SIM activation process. This means after making a sale we don’t have active users following that sale.
Research
Self testing
I did self testing first to get a broader understanding of the onboarding. The product owner and myself tested the whole onboarding journey and we discovered some insights. The self testing has granted me some insights that expert stakeholders didn’t know
Survey questionnaire
After self testing, I created a questionnaire because there is not enough time to do interviews. We’re trying to see how people use our current onboarding experience and to validate the assumptions of the expert stakeholders that I interviewed or if there are new variables to consider. Out of 254 surveys we sent to our current users, we got 53 responses.
1.
ID checks only allows Australian Passport, Driver’s license, Medicare with middle name. Foreign immigrants or permanent residents will have issues just to activate their SIM card. This is one of the huge reason which lead to dead accounts as some users have no means to get pass the ID check stage during onboarding.
2.
Another contributor to the low active users is that, within the onboarding process more than half of our current users didn’t understand what to do at first during the “enter voucher code” page. Some thought they need to pay twice for the mobile plan.
3.
The survey validated the fact that some people downloaded Reach app first before they downloaded the main Spacetalk app. However this is quite low as only 24% of users have this problem.
4.
During pairing 71% of our users scanned the barcode for pairing using the default barcode scanner instead of the Spacetalk app scanner. Which lead them to a dead end at first.
5.
On an opinion scale within the survey more than half rated that their teens turned off their location permission because they didn’t like to be tracked.
Challenges
Shareholder pressure
The downloads are already quite low already but the CEOs wanted us to monetize Reach to a 14 day free trial and then charge them $5.99 a month subscription because the business has shareholder pressure to get to cashflow positive within the end of the financial year.
What I do to handle this challenge
Since putting a price tag on a product might cause a churn, I was thinking on how to reduce the Churn rate when it hits, which might happen 1 month after the launch. I worked with marketing on giving the customers some extra benefits such as special promotion, discounts, exclusive benefits. We also talked about how to reengage churned customers but that will be the last resort.
Replacing QR code with Deep Link
This is the main solution to the QR code scan problem that most users are having. Instead of a QR code, the parent will send a link to the teen and the teen just need to click the link, install, and the link will be pasted and it will pair automatically without any effort.
This solution came up when I did a workshop with the engineers. As a Product Designer I need to implement it in my designs and how to use UX writing and layout to make it easy for the users to understand
ID check improvements
I’ve spoken to legal and there are no issues with allowing foreign passports to do ID checks, and so the devs fixed all the issues.
Permission page improvements
Since we’re doing with younger audiences whom we wanted to get consent to track them, it is time to think outside of the box. I used smiley faces to help influence the audience psychologically.
Help users to download Spacetalk app first
Created a method for the users to recover from error if they downloaded the Reach app first. I’ve added an illustration, message and link to direct the customer to download the main Spacetalk app from the app store first.
Voucher code issue
I added a UX copy to remind the users to check their email for the voucher code if they already purchased before hand.
Usability Testing
Upper management wanted to make sure that deep linking really works before officially launching so they wanted us to test the UAT version before launching. The main objective of the usability testing is to evaluate the ease of use, comprehension of next steps within the improved onboarding experience.
Methodology
In person moderated usability testing via Lookback
6 participants, all parents.
1:1 session 45 min each.
Format
A mixture of Task based testing format & Think aloud protocol.
Testing scenarios
See how users interact with:
Registering the Spacetalk app all the way to deep linking to pair both apps.
See if they can navigate their way out they downloaded the wrong app.
See if they can navigate their way when the deeplink url is lost.
Key Results
1.
App registration to Deep linking
5 participants know how to use Deeplinking successfully on their first try.
2.
Recovery from error if using the wrong app
All participants managed to complete the task seamlessly due to the CTA taking them to the app store download page directly.
3.
Recovery from error if link url is lost
2 participants managed to do it on the first try. Only 1 user needs help but the others managed to pull through by themselves.
When losing the deeplink URL, most users are a bit confused as to why they should click the message link again. Some people wonder what to do next. I modified the UX copy to provide a clearer instruction.
Improvements for Onboarding
These are happy paths only to keep the portfolio short, I can take you through the whole flow within the job interview.
What is deep linking?
It is the process where the parent can send their kid a link, and all the kid have to do is tap the link, get taken into the app store to download, and once they open the downloaded app they will automatically synced with the parent's app. This requires no effort from the child other than tapping the link, download and install the app, and opening the app.
Spacetalk Reach onboarding filter
Generally if the kid has the deeplink URL when the app opens it will sync automatically and pair, however there are some edge cases. Since there are 2 unhappy paths where the parents get stuck because they downloaded the reach app first instead of the main Spacetalk app, and another one where the kid lost the deeplink URL. We created a solution in the form of a filter when the user opens the Reach app for the first time.
The filter will guide the user into the tailored solutions by defining if they are a parent or not (kid). There will be a page with an illustration + UX copy and CTA button to help them recover from error.
Influencing users via psychology
Teens/Kids wanted some freedom when they reached a certain age. We have to make them feel free to make their own decision, and we cannot ask them directly to do things. We can just have a default permission screen or we can use a little bit of psychological influence using smiley face. The next button will be disabled unless the kid enabled their location which seems forced but if we use a frown or a flat sad face, the child has a subconscious propensity to turn the location on. In addition the smiley face makes their decision seem less forced. I’m keen to see the survey / interview responses from Teen/Kid users about this concept I made.
Outcome
2 weeks after launching we gathered some analytics and we are comparing it to how it was before before launch:
132%
Downloads increased due to marketing campaigns
24%
Number of pairing increased
17%
Churn rate, mostly because now we are charging them money
7%
Total of active reach app increased
Retrospective
The timespan where we gather the data is quite short because we want to show shareholders as much progress as we can. We can see that within 2 weeks we have made some improvements with the Deep linking although 2% increase is quite low and did not reach our target of 10%. The number of pairing did not match up with the number of downloads which we need to investigate further by gathering feedback.
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