TrackR

TrackR’s app, cloud databases and small Bluetooth devices have helped millions of people locate their misplaced items. TrackR shipped over 8 million devices and was sold in over 5,000 stores worldwide. TrackR was ranked #45 by the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies, and was backed by the Revolution Growth, Foundry Group, Resolute Ventures, IncWell Venture Capital, Orange Fab, Amazon Alexa Fund and others.

Career Takeaways:

✅ This was my first major foray into the world of consumer electronics. It was an incredible experience where I learned how to manage and lead projects with cross-functional teams in a high-growth company. I honed my communication and other soft skills while working at TrackR.

Project Overview:

TrackR’s app, cloud databases and small Bluetooth devices have helped millions of people locate their misplaced items. TrackR shipped over 8 million devices and was sold in over 5,000 stores worldwide. TrackR was ranked #45 by the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies, and was backed by the Revolution Growth, Foundry Group, Resolute Ventures, IncWell Venture Capital, Orange Fab, Amazon Alexa Fund and others.

The TrackR mobile application suffered from numerous UX issues, and technical problems, and the hardware and firmware needed some additional overhauling. When tested, our customers were consistently confused about the capabilities of the devices and the mobile application.

Challenges:

1. Hardware. It’s hard y’all.
2. Wildcard advertising which alluded to capabilities beyond the scope of our tech.
3. Competition-heavy market.
4. Typical growth stuff.

The Process

The Approach

We wanted to rebuild from the ground up in a short amount of time. We also wanted to ensure we were doing things the right way. This meant me stepping in to ensure we were following a proper UX process which included connecting directly to consumers, performing ethnographic research, doing deep dives on our tech stack—and being honest about where we were from a capabilities standpoint.

One of the great things about having customer success in-house was that I could listen-in on calls on a daily basis and get a feel for what the most common issues were. I also formed a strong relationship with the CS team, giving them the task of coming to our product team to let us know what the most common issue was. We did this on a weekly basis so we could act quickly on bugs.

Define Phase:

Understand the user

• Identify the primary user
• Identify profiles (user, task, environmental)
• Develop personas
• Define what users want/need to do
• Pinpoint user goals
• Develop user stories

Understand current state

• Document current experience
• Analytics review
• Pinpoint usability issues
• Competitive analysis
• Benchmarking

Ideation Phase:

Identify design scope

• Identify user testing scenarios
• Storyboard user flows (inputs/outputs)
• Identify screens for user validation
• Explore multiple design options (parallel)
• Level set on UX scope (happy path vs. all possible designs)
• Determine level of functional fidelity needed (paper, wireframe, proto, etc.)
• In-house or outsourced design

Develop iterative, low/medium fidelity designs

• Brainstorm design options through sketching
• Mock up basic concepts
• Develop wireframes (static, click-thru, mobile, etc.)
• Explore information architecture

Develop high-fidelity prototypes

• Determine best tool for simulation (iRise, HTML, other)
• Determine number of screen sizes for simulation

Apply GUI standards

Wires & Flows:

Testing & Prototyping

While I was involved in testing and prototyping across all facets of our product offering, both hardware and software, I’ll focus on our software efforts and process.

We had a very eager customer base which made recruiting for testing easy, we had over 1,000 customers sign up to be an Alpha/Beta tester of the app. Gathering information about lifestyle, demographics, habits, and early usability data using lo-fi prototypes.

We used Usability Hub to perform rounds of testing around navigation flows and to collect qualitative feedback. We used Zoom calls and more structured tests with customers in our Alpha and Beta groups to more holistically test customer onboarding with actual devices and the latest versions of our application.

Final Designs & Product:

The Results

After about 6 months of testing and design work, we launched a new mobile app which led to an increase of 50 points to our NPS without resetting. We saw an increase in app ratings from an average of 1.2 stars to a peak of 4.7 stars for both iOS and Android.

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