APPLE WATCH COMPANION APP

Company: General Motors
Product: My Chevrolet Mobile App
Role: UX Lead

As the lead UX designer I worked in a pod structured team with 3 developers, a product manager, and a system architect. We built the app from the ground up in an agile setting. The goal was to launch an app that allowed a user to utilize the connected car features of the mobile app more conveniently.

Process

Research and Refinement

Original business requirements had outlined functionality for over 20 features. Pulling analytics from our mobile app, we analyzed the most used features and used benchmarking and focus groups to determine which ones would make the most sense on a watch interface. I compiled these results and presented them to stakeholders. My key focus was to convince them to buy into the idea that we did not need 1:1 parity with the mobile app. The data-driven approach proved successful and I was able to successfully pair down the requirements list to 3 key features.

Product Design

This phase consisted of designing wireframes of our mobile app's features for the watch interface. Because of the pod structure, I was able to work with dev teams to get functional prototypes that actually linked with an iPhone. These prototypes were produced rapidly and provided the basis for our design validation and user testing. Because of the speed of development and simple UI of the watch interface, I was able to simultaneously tackle UI design and pass assets to the developers as needed.

Testing

Testing was performed by our research team and the results drove iteration in the design.

Development

I stayed active with the pod team after design phase was complete participating in sprint planning and demos. Being actively involved with the dev team allowed design changes and assets to be delivered rapidly, just as the dev team was able to quickly turn out prototypes during the design phase.

Results

Key Accomplishments

• Pioneered the successful adoption of smaller cross-discipline teams.
• Drastically reduced the overall projectime timeline by working side-by-side with developers.
• Proved the value of design metholodogy in a business and technology setting.

Challenges Met

• Successfully refined MVP scope through research and data.
• Quickly iterated on designs even though design validation was done outside of our team.
• Delivered UX and UI delvierables as a lone designer on a cross-discipline team.
• Busted the myth that more is better.