Amazon Key In-Home
Company: Amazon
Timeline: Jan 2016 - October 2017 (launch)
Role: UX Lead and senior UX designer working at times with user researcher, design technologist, up to 3 fellow UX designers and a creative director.
Work performed: Design leadership, interaction design, UI design, visual design and production, hardware design, service design, print design, brand, wireframes and flows, functional specifications, prototypes, qualitative and quantitative research.
Amazon Key includes a dual home and car component. My ownership primarily focused on the in-home experience and has included the Amazon Key app architecture (iOS and Android), everyday experience, setup, delivery, integration with hardware partners, and yet-to-be-released features. I have been lucky to work collaboratively with my incredible design and product team.
Timeline: Jan 2016 - October 2017 (launch)
Role: UX Lead and senior UX designer working at times with user researcher, design technologist, up to 3 fellow UX designers and a creative director.
Work performed: Design leadership, interaction design, UI design, visual design and production, hardware design, service design, print design, brand, wireframes and flows, functional specifications, prototypes, qualitative and quantitative research.
Amazon Key includes a dual home and car component. My ownership primarily focused on the in-home experience and has included the Amazon Key app architecture (iOS and Android), everyday experience, setup, delivery, integration with hardware partners, and yet-to-be-released features. I have been lucky to work collaboratively with my incredible design and product team.
Concept
Amazon Key was intended foremost for Amazon customers with delivery pain points - unsafe neighborhoods with package theft or that didn't allow packages to be left on their porch - but it also encompassed smart home enthusiasts, convenience seekers, and those interested in home monitoring.
I started on the Key team as the first full-time designer when only the high level concept was baked and the hardware partners were still in flux. We knew we needed a smart lock and our gut told us a camera was important for customers to feel safe with a stranger opening their door. To remove dependencies on other teams and schedules, we planned to build a new Amazon app for Key customers to manage their devices and in-home deliveries but to integrate with the existing delivery driver app. My work was to begin fleshing out the full experience with a primary focus on the Key app.
I started on the Key team as the first full-time designer when only the high level concept was baked and the hardware partners were still in flux. We knew we needed a smart lock and our gut told us a camera was important for customers to feel safe with a stranger opening their door. To remove dependencies on other teams and schedules, we planned to build a new Amazon app for Key customers to manage their devices and in-home deliveries but to integrate with the existing delivery driver app. My work was to begin fleshing out the full experience with a primary focus on the Key app.
Customer Journey
The in-home customer journey was 5 steps. I participated in designing all steps of the journey but my responsibilities prior to launch were Setup and Daily Life. After we launched, I assumed Delivery as well to own all aspects of the In-Home experience outside of amazon.com.
Getting Up to Speed
Within the first few weeks, I immersed myself in the latest smart home technology and experiences. The biggest player in the smart home lock/camera space at the time was the Nest camera, with Ring's doorbell camera growing in popularity. I got up to speed quickly on other cameras from Arlo, Blink and Canary as well as locks from August, Yale, Kwikset, Schlage and some home security products. I learned the technology and soaked in their setup and daily use experiences as well as app architecture and control features.
Tenets
After getting a feel for the space, I worked to define some tenets to guide the Amazon Key experience. This was a team effort with equal input from my UX manager and Key product manager.
- APPROACHABLE: We provide a sense of familiarity and comfort with the unknown.
- SAFE: We use encryption and other security measures for protection and privacy.
- RELIABLE: The CX is consistent with our promise and customer expectation. We consistently communicate where and when access will be allowed. We don't make promises we can't keep.
- DIRECT: We communicate important information and security risks immediately. We don't sugar coat. We don't cloak information to give a false sense of security. We don'g give false assurances. We're removed technical and Amazon jargon and speak in language that resonates with the consumer. We're concise, not flowery or verbose.
- EFFORTLESS: Happens in the background with no planning, no added decisions, no back of your mind cognitive load until it's resolved. Stress-free. No matter what happens that goes wrong, we get you back on the happy path. There's a solution to your problem and someone there for you.
- MINIMAL: Design is authentic. We avoid decoration. Elegantly concise. The more you add, the less customers read.
- VISIONARY: Defining new territory with a strong point of view on how that territory should work. We don't settle for the easiest thing. We design the new norm. No matter how complex it is behind the scenes, to our customers it feels like magic.
- ADAPTIVE: Changes to meet the customer's need. Customized to you. Evolves with the customer need. Modular and scalable to a variety of smart home uses. Failsafe system adjusting for dynamic contexts.
Positioning
One of the biggest hurdles for me working on Key was the problem of too many apps and an unclear customer focus. I knew that "Another Amazon app!" was the last thing someone wanted. And yet the product plan was to release two MORE apps for our launch - The Amazon Cloud Cam and Amazon Key apps - to be used in conjunction with the Amazon Shopping and Alexa apps. Tightly woven into this problem and possible solution space was the unfocused value prop of Amazon Key. Were we a delivery app? Or were we a smart home app? And how did in-car delivery fit into this equation of in-home needs?
The decision was to position Key as an access solution - access for deliveries, service providers and household - and to work in concert with Alexa, Amazon Shopping and Amazon Cloud Cam experiences.
Information Architecture
I drafted up many concepts for the main landing page in the Key app and how the navigation could work - hamburger menu, pizza menu, bottom bar menu, top tabs, grid styled menu, gesture based navigation... or combinations of each. This forced product and scaling questions like would we be supporting more than one lock per customer? More than one lock per address? What other devices would we support beyond lock and camera? Could you be an owner at your house but receive shared guest access at a friend's house?
After we had settled on a design, our product positioning changed to combine apps with the Cloud Cam App. This meant collaborating with another team to merge our designs and customer needs into an IA that worked for both of us. This was a great product direction for our customers but meant a lot of voices and compromises in the design process. All designers on both teams got involved in proposing and reviewing solutions. Once we landed on a design we felt good about, we ran a user study to test how it performed. We made a few tweaks per the findings but it confirmed the bulk of our design. The "one-app" direction got reversed a few months later but we kept the finalized Key IA since engineering had already implemented it.
Style Guide
In concert with our positioning efforts, our design team needed to define a visual style guide for the Key app. Should we be white like Amazon Shopping? Should we be dark like Amazon Devices? How did we fit with the newly updated Amazon Sky shopping style guide? It was a joint design team decision to steer towards a smart home style and be a relative to the Amazon Device style guide. This was a team effort. Collectively we defined define the colors, typography, forms, icons, controls, rows, spacing... of our Amazon Key app style guide.
Setup
The setup experience for Key was crucial and complex. I spent the lion's share of my time in the initial phases of this project familiarizing myself with the technicalities of each lock brand and model and crafting paper and digital install guides to help the less technically-inclined customers succeed with confidence during this step. The tradeoff was to balance a CX of a customized setup for each model against scalability as we multiplied the vendors and models we partnered with. We had countless reviews on the setup experience with all stakeholders and senior leadership and I conducted many task-based user research sessions of lock installation for our various models, not to mention my many personal install experiences on my own front door.
Hardware guts
Early designs that didn't scale.
After our product launched and we honed our data analysis to track where customers were stuck in setup or what technical glitches were occurring, we refined firmware and communication between the camera and lock but the setup flow I designed has proven stable and successful with minimal changes required.
Final setup design
"Installation was straight forward, took about 20 minutes all together"
"Product was easy to install with great instructions."
"I found the installation instructions easy to follow, with lots of detail and hints to make the process as simple as possible."
- Amazon customer reviews
"Product was easy to install with great instructions."
"I found the installation instructions easy to follow, with lots of detail and hints to make the process as simple as possible."
- Amazon customer reviews
Daily Life
Our product and engineering team was predominantly focused on the hardware setup and delivery experiences. I regularly voiced the need to focus on what I felt was the more impactful and lasting experience - the "Daily Life" experience once the lock and camera were set up. This included how you and your household adjusted to living with a smart lock on your door and a camera facing you as you entered. It tapped into our tenets of being safe, reliable, direct, effortless, adaptive... One aspect of this was the lock status and control. It had to reflect all states accurately and timely, and it had to be easy to control and decipher. I explored dozens of control options and worked with our design technologist to finesse animation options for each.
Reviews, Research & Feedback
Our team used many methods to gather feedback on our designs prior to launch. We worked with many Amazon teams that we depended on and required their stakeholder feedback - shopping, post purchase, delivery, logistics, Cloud Cam, Alexa... After several executive reviews, when the main customer journey steps had gone through several design iterations, we held an open house to share out our solution for all stakeholders and gather early feedback from all parties.
We gathered additional feedback through our lengthy alpha period with internal Amazon employees. Myself and many on our team installed these devices in our homes to participate. I also conducted qualitative research studies and sent out many quantitative surveys. And we held several focus groups in various states within the US.
Launch Success & Controversy
Amazon Key In-Home launched on October 25, 2017 with two 3rd party lock brands: Kwikset and Yale, two lock types: retrofit and full-replacement keypad, and a 1st party camera that worked as the wifi hub for the lock. The predominant themes from press and customer reviews were that the installation was fast and easy and the shared access features were delightful timesavers. As we suspected, there were a lot of mixed reviews about the security of in-home delivery and additional Amazon "eyes and ears" in the home. We continue to work on building that trust while we hone the experience in this new space that changes the way people use their front door.
"The lock and camera changed my daily habits more than anything else, in a good way. I no longer have to carry keys on runs, walks, general outings since I can just use my code to get back in." - Amazon customer review
“At first this seems silly and insane, but once you read the details it seems completely logical, secure, and solves a huge problem. It’s incredible how technology changes what’s “normal” in our daily life.” – Michael M. (twitter)
"This has been so wonderful. I moved my 100 yr old MIL into my house and hospice comes out 3 times a week to bathe her and once for the nurse. I can open the door for them when I see them on my Ring doorbell. With the Cloud Cam I can monitor her during the day to make sure she is doing alright. Best thing I ever bought." - Amazon customer review
Amazon Key - Strangers deliver stuff to you
Airbnb - Stay at a strangers house
Uber - Get in a strangers car
Instacart - Get strangers to do your shopping
Taskrabbit - Have strangers run errands
Tinder - Date strangers.
- Nameet Potnis (twitter)
“At first this seems silly and insane, but once you read the details it seems completely logical, secure, and solves a huge problem. It’s incredible how technology changes what’s “normal” in our daily life.” – Michael M. (twitter)
"This has been so wonderful. I moved my 100 yr old MIL into my house and hospice comes out 3 times a week to bathe her and once for the nurse. I can open the door for them when I see them on my Ring doorbell. With the Cloud Cam I can monitor her during the day to make sure she is doing alright. Best thing I ever bought." - Amazon customer review
Amazon Key - Strangers deliver stuff to you
Airbnb - Stay at a strangers house
Uber - Get in a strangers car
Instacart - Get strangers to do your shopping
Taskrabbit - Have strangers run errands
Tinder - Date strangers.
- Nameet Potnis (twitter)
BuzzFeed vote October 25, 2017
Learnings & Next Steps
It was exciting to see in customer responses and numbers that we'd solved a real customer pain point in delivery and we'd provided a more convenient lifestyle many hadn't considered before. We weighed these enthusiastic responses from loyal customers against many who experienced frustration with setup and delivery. We worked hard to mediate the technical and mechanical difficulties of installation and optimize our delivery logistics.
Many of the feature requests, disappointments, and hesitations shared through customer reviews and the press were known features we couldn't fit in for launch. This included big and small things like a driver rating system, uniforms, and branded vans to build the professionalism and perceived trustworthiness of our drivers. Household account support. Custom notification preferences per user profile... We also learned that many of our customers were unaware of the separate Cloud Cam app available for motion clips which impacted their perception of the product :-( We prioritized this stack of improvements against our goal of increasing awareness and adoption.
Aside from scaling to include more lock and camera brands and styles, we realized that the size of the market interested in the convenience factor for daily life features but not in delivery, was large. We worked quickly on shifting our messaging and feature-set to attract those customers. We also built in more robust monitoring and worked out hardware and delivery logistic kinks. And importantly, we delved deep into how to build more customer trust in the delivery component. We've got more exciting things rolling out in all of those areas!
Many of the feature requests, disappointments, and hesitations shared through customer reviews and the press were known features we couldn't fit in for launch. This included big and small things like a driver rating system, uniforms, and branded vans to build the professionalism and perceived trustworthiness of our drivers. Household account support. Custom notification preferences per user profile... We also learned that many of our customers were unaware of the separate Cloud Cam app available for motion clips which impacted their perception of the product :-( We prioritized this stack of improvements against our goal of increasing awareness and adoption.
Aside from scaling to include more lock and camera brands and styles, we realized that the size of the market interested in the convenience factor for daily life features but not in delivery, was large. We worked quickly on shifting our messaging and feature-set to attract those customers. We also built in more robust monitoring and worked out hardware and delivery logistic kinks. And importantly, we delved deep into how to build more customer trust in the delivery component. We've got more exciting things rolling out in all of those areas!
Our Design Team
Love this talented bunch + Jono (missing but not forgotten).