HUSQVARNA
automower
connect
Husqvarna's robotic lawnmower range has been in the market since 1995. Over the last 3 years I created an intuitive application to enhance the users interactions with the robotic mowers.
About the project
I was asked to design Husqvarna Automower Connect - A connected application that would work with all of Husqvarna’s soon to be released connected robotic lawnmowers range. Husqvarna’s automower is a robotic gardening solution that can handle steep slopes and complex, rough and hard-cut lawns and charge itself. They wanted the new design to look professional, high-tech and handle all the technical challenges with adding HMI capabilities into an app.
The app was aimed for our end users with an automower in their garden but also for professional use and setup as well. Husqvarna has a product road map with several new models with inbuilt bluetooth and GPRS connectivity and varying levels of features and capabilities.
The project was designed during the year of 2017 and finally developed and released in January 2018.
UX Challenges
The tech
The Automowers are built with very different sets of features and not the most best tech for connectivity. There are different channels of communication that interact differently over bluetooth and GPRS and the onboard processor in the mower. This created many gray areas where we could not display incorrect information in the app but at the same time could not sufficiently help the users.
The organisation
Husqvarna at its heart is a hardware organisation. Moving fast and breaking feature roadmaps into iterative work and releasing features in batches was something that is just not instinctive in the organisation. Product owners and managers who have worked for many years with hardware products were now responsible for software products and wanted to launch a product only when it is perfected with an all or nothing attitude.
The need for a UX design process in the organisation
UX Design was still at a nascent stage when I had first started on this project. Most work had been outsourced to agencies before this and there was a serious lack of understanding of UX’s role in the process as well as a fixed process for proficient deliveries and evaluations.
The Research phase
and approach
The largest part of my initial approach to this product was to focus on the minimum viable features that would be required in the app to completely replace the use of the HMI as well as support all our target groups with their needs.
In order to do this, I had to interview users, understand the robotic machines and all their inbuilt features, the interface provided to control install and micromanage the mowers as well as the different people in the organisation working in their individual departments.
Product workshops
We involved users and the most important stakeholders in the Husqvarna organisation by organising and facilitating customer journey workshops over a couple of months in Stockholm, Huskvarna (town near Jönköping in central Sweden, where the company HQ is based out of), and Charlotte, North Carolina, in the United States.
This gave me insight into how the user thinks and works in their garden, their needs, and their considerations while purchasing a product for their garden.
At the same time, we used these workshops to understand the organisational structure and chain of command as well as educate the stakeholders in the organisation about our vision for a digital future for Husqvarna and established a presence for the user experience in the global design team. Husqvarna is 330 years old this year and has mainly been a leader in the physical product space for this entire time.
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UX Solutions — Information Architecture and wireframing
UX solutions were something | began to work with once we had a consensual understanding of the scope, resources andvision plan for the product.
User stories were used to outline feature implementations and scope of the feature. These were then discussedextensively with regards to timelines and prioritisations.
| would often create wireframes during the meeting in the form of rough sketches to help speed up the discussions andtry to present a big cake solution (all-inclusive) versus a small cake (broken into MVP pieces) that we could split upaccording to resource availability and backlog planning.
Alot of information architecture was done initially and held strong through the first year of the launch but we had toredesign it once the app became heavier and full of features that needed increased visiblity, especially forsemi-professional and power users. This work is currently underway.
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Ul Design — |Visual Design |and Design systems
The entire Ul was derived from Wireframescreated for every individual flow within theproduct. The Ul, images, typography,iconography, and symbols were created inSketch and shared with the developmentteam via Zeplin.
I worked on the initial Ul Design andcollaborated with several visual designers.Slowly but surely, we found the rightpersonality and brand image we wanted tocreate for Husqvarna Automower Connect.We used Husqvarna Automower ConnectUser Interface Design to eventually inform thevarious Husqvarna Digital Product Guidelinesand Design Systems we created for apps.
PRODUCT BENCHMARKING
Product benchmarking was a part of the process that made me realise where we stand in comparison to our competition:
in terms of an overall systems user experience. from the unboxing to the first opening of the manual to booting upproducts. Blt was very interesting to test different products at our testing facilities where a lot of the competitorsproducts were being stress tested for varying parameters and garden setups.
I created a few benchmarking tests that would go on to become the standard by which we measured all our and ourcompetition's robotic products and the experience of using them,
I learned a lot about how Every brand has a slightly different approach when it comes to the actual robots and thecommunication pathways used by the machine to communicate with the application. | can proudly say that at the end of ~~the benchmarking study,
despite my obvious bias | can say that we were ahead of the competition in an overall experience. We still had a fewspecific problematic areas that we identified as a result of the benchmarking test but it felt great to know that people's scores reflected that they preferred our overall userexperience.
Usability tests
We conducted a larger usability test with 12 users in the summer of 2019.
I designed the test to be comparable across experienced as well as inexperienced users of the product.The usability test involved a series of usability tasks, a series of interview/discussion questions and a smallgraphical evaluation of the apps interface design.
| conducted the tests with several users in the Stockholm and Smalandareas to evaluate existing and upcoming features and generally inquireabout their thoughts and interest in potential business models formaking AMC profitable in the near future.
The goals of usability testing include ;
- Establishing a baseline of user performance
- Establishing and validating user performance measures and
- Identifying potential UX and Ul design concerns to be addressedIn order to improve the efficiency, productivity, and end-usersatisfaction.
General interview and discussion questions :
included discussions about
1. How users perceive the Automower system
2. How they handle their garden generally
3. Suggestions for improvement in the Automower system
Process Design
I was the only UX designer at the start of the project on the team who was incharge of defining the ux scope and the UX.process. The other members were mostly the RnD at robotics, App developers and Product owners. ;Alarge part of my work at husqvarna has involved creating a standard process for ux design and involving decision imakers at every major step of the design process with the help of slack conversations, calls and irl meetings to gather ~~feedback and additional input. My time at husqvarna has involved a lot of work with establishing a way of working,communication channels for text translations and user manuals for entire product ranges.
Anew and challenging aspect of building this product foraglobal community imaived consideration fr tex lengthsand buttons and precise copywriting that would go on toberasited t ove 2 languages. These text singswent.through alot rigorous technica back an forth ed toocreation of a copywriting guideline or all dita products. Itvas important to stay consistent with cur HAInomenclature and physical inscriptions on products. 53massive project of its own and is currently still a work in :progres in the automower conect project and the globalGesgn team in huscuarna
Outcome and Conclusions
We have added over 15 different models of Automowers to the application,added support for professional users, solved hundreds of bugs and added aton of functionality to the app. The UX process is more solidifed than it wasbefore and we have plans to conduct regular usability tests and userfeedback interviews to better understand where the users needs andproblems are. We also worked on an HMI Redesign in 2018, which is a casestudy of its own.
Over the last 2 years this product has evolved into one of Husqvarna's mostsuccessful digital products with over 320,000 connected users worldwide.
On Product launch dayin the
office with an Automower
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