RETURN HOMe
Vacuum robots live with humans at home. Cohabiting with users at home with many obstacles makes unexpected interactions and events. Pause & Return is the feature to use a contextual intelligence of robots in order to make the robots always ready for the next mission.
Role : UX Lead
Mainly contributed in user flow, robot behavior design, and UX/UI design.
Coordinate user research, data analysis, feature notification message, FAQ contents work.
Period: 2020 - 2021
DESIGN GOAL
Users are frustrated when they want to use the vacuum robot but find it died on the floor because the previous mission was paused and terminated. Letting the robot go back home by itself when it is paused for a long time would give benefits to users that the robot is always ready for the mission whenever users want it to clean rooms.
USER RESEARCH
We conducted user survey to learn more about how and why users pause their robots, as well as their expectations for timing out, ending the job in place, and the robot automatically driving home.
Survey respondents (n=347) were primarily current app users with smart mapping robots. A small minority have abandoned the app (4%) or never used it (4%).
Survey
We conducted user survey to learn more about how and why users pause their robots, as well as their expectations for timing out, ending the job in place, and the robot automatically driving home. Survey respondents (n=347) were primarily current app users with smart mapping robots. A small minority have abandoned the app (4%) or never used it (4%).
This makes sense, as the most common reasons for pausing the robot were related to noise and/or needing to intervene with the robot. The “other” responses reflected similar themes, with most referencing a robot issue (e.g. stuck, lost/delocalized, trouble getting home).
Most participants also reported resuming the job at a later time. Those who initially paused using the robot button were more likely to resume using the button or carry the robot home, while those who used the app were more likely to resume or cancel/send home from the app.
Key Takeaways
Respondents saw value in having the robot drive home if left paused. They recommend the robot should drive home after 30min paused or when battery reaches low status.
Most respondents expected the robot to cancel the job when driving home.
Explore The majority of respondents who did share a user case for "end now" in place needed to edit the cleaning job in progress.
USER SCENARIO
Based on the above survey, we narrowed down user scenarios when users want their robot to automatically drive home without user command if left paused. Also, to make the scenario in detail, we collaborated with Data Science team to understand the % of 'pause' initiations and the paused minutes before user resumes the mission .
User Scenario
To discover potential information which needs to be displayed on the helmet to support the spacesuit functionality.
Paused and having low battery
When the robot detects low battery, let it go back home by itself and charge to resume mission later.
Paused and about to terminate mission
When mission is timed out after paused for 90min, let the robot go back home and finish the mission.
Paused over certain time
when user forgets that they paused the robot, then let the robot go back home and wait for user command.
Data Analysis
The data showed that most of timed-out missions was paused by users (over 80%). Also, users mostly take next action when the robot is paused by users in 10minutes. That means if the paused time is over 10min, users usually forget the paused robot and the robot will run out the battery on the floor.
UX DESIGN
UX design focuses on three parts: 1) how to educate clearly about this new behavior and benefit of it, 2) whether/when to notify the long-paused status of robots to users, and 3) how to keep it not noisy because major reason of pausing robots is its noise.
UI Test
As a way to inform users about new "paused & auto-return" features, we considered two designs: 1) providing a contextual design with CTA button to make users to let their robot go back home and wait for them only when the robot is paused over N min or has low battery while paused, and 2) providing three options on an overflow UI, which users can select what they want their robots to do except resuming the mission anytime.
UX Flow
Based on data analysis and UI test, we decided to make all flow simple as possible. Rather than giving an option to choose robot behaviors after paused and letting it wait on the dock in a mission, we reduced the mission timeout time from 90min to 30min, and let robots go back home when it faces with timeout then finished the mission on the dock.
