O-KAM Pro
An app redesigned for the Chinese security camera brand “Rraycom“ for the 300,000 customers in the U.S.
#Industry Project #Team Project #Cultural Difference
Roles
I am the design lead of a team of 4 responsible for the “main pages”, leading the process of user research, ideation, and prototyping, especially the UI/UX designer of the Homepage and Livestream features.
Problems
There are different habits in using mobile apps between China and the U.S. It’s challenging for American customers to use the app directly translated from its Chinese version with too dense information on one page.
Techniques
Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis, Questionaires, User Interview, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Test
Objective
An app redesigned for the security camera customers in the U.S. to have a more flattening structure and simple visual style.
01 Context
Under the tide of globalization, an increasing number of enterprises are venturing into the overseas e-commerce market and seeking brand enhancement. Gangshan Guanglian Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. is one such enterprise, located in Shenzhen, China. The company’s security camera brand “Rraycom“ currently connects with an app platform “O-KAM Pro“ and now wants to have a new one which is enhanced in UI/UX to seek larger overseas market. Therefore, designers play an important role in this plan.
Within a 9-week timeframe, we intern group of 9 redesigned the app based on O-KAM Pro, and tailored it to the 200,000 to 300,000 users in the U.S.
As for the workflow, we conducted the user research and defined the same goals together, then broke into two teams responsible for “Main Pages” and “Other Pages”. I’m the leader of the former one and my task is to redesign the Homepage and Livestream pages.
UI/UX Design Team of “Main Pages“
02 Secondary Research
Market Research
Self-Monitoring security camera has a growing market in the U.S. and what customers care about most is safety.
After reviewing reports about security camera market in the U.S., we learned that:
Although the current spending on professional monitoring is four times greater than on self-monitoring, self-monitoring revenue will grow more than twice as fast as professional monitoring one from 2022 to 2027. It is predicted that by the end of 2027, 18 million homes in the United States will have self-monitoring security systems, which is a positively growing market.
For customers, the 2 main drivers for purchasing self-monitoring cameras are: feeling safe about their privacy and having a peaceful mind knowing their homes are safe, anytime and anywhere.
In the self-monitoring security camera market, the United States is dominated by Ring and Blink from Amazon, Nest from Google. Chinese brands like Xiaomi Home from Xiaomi and Eufy from Anker also perform well.
Cross-Cultural Research on App Design
The current English version of O-KAM Pro directly translated from its Chinese version may not be the best solution for American users.
Konwing that we are designing for American users of O-KAM Pro and we all grow up in Chinese environment, I proposed to do a cross-cultural research on app design between China and America. I mainly referred to the article “Why are Western apps more minimalistic than Asian apps?“ :
Competitive Analysis
Keeping the cultural difference in mind, we continued analyzing the app platforms of the competitive products above, through Apple Store, Google Play and other online app stores :
We concluded the points in UI/UX scope that American users prefer :
Flattening app structure can help easily navigate and make an intuitive user flow;
Simple visual style is popular with one focus section on each page;
Real-time & accurate features like two-way communication and customizable buttons for remote control are the most essential to a smart home app platform;
and dislike :
complicated interfaces with too many texts and no focus are hard to navigate.
These findings reinforced our cross-cultural research insights.
03 Primary Research
Questionnaire & Phone Interviews
We nine designed together the questionnaire in a link and sent them to 100+ American customers by attaching the link to a text message. The phone numbers were provided by the customer service dean of “Raycom”.
20+ responses were received after one week and 7 of them agreed to have a phone interview with us. After analyzing the replies, we listed some important data as below.
We learned from primary research that
Most customers monitor not only their properties, but also their kids, pets and the elderly through our app and camera products;
They can get to the features they want easily, but still expect more functions, like wider adjustable angle;
Customers would like to see the camera’s vision directly upon launch, which is the thing they mostly care about.
04 Understand Users
User Persona
Wrapping up the insights from the research stage, we created 3 personas to better emphasize customers using Rraycom and O-KAM Pro in America.
05 Define the Problem
Then we defined the major two problems waiting for us to solve :
🧶1. American customers struggle with the user interface in Chinese patterns;
🧶2. Their emotional needs beyond security monitoring are not given much attention to.
Design Strategies
And we defined our two design strategies for the next stage as the response to the problems above:
07 Design & Iteration
Information Architecture
At the beginning of design stage, we nine drew the overall information architecture as below. Then we broke into two teams to design the wireframing.
Because I led the cross-cultural research and proposed some drafts to the project manager, who approved my concepts, I took on the role of the leader of “Main Pages“ team and my design mainly focuses on the “Homepage“ and “Livestream“, the most frequently used interfaces.
Wireframing
Within the design team, we met weekly to iterate our low-fi wireframes for three times, also for the communication among different pages. Here I mainly show iteration details of my design :
Homepage
Livestream
Overview of All Wireframes
08 Prototyping
After using the design system from Rraycom’s software department, we finished the hi-fi prototype in a consistent visual style. Here are more details of my design part :
Homepage & Livestream
Overview of All Prototypes