Introducing the new Nexar app

Redesigning the app to launch a new connected dash cam

🥸 Editor’s note

This case study isn’t done. I’m writing it in public to pressure myself into finishing it. If you’re reading this, that means it hasn’t worked very well yet.

Summary

Nexar makes smart dash cams that record your drives and monitor your car when it’s parked. Whenever it detects an incident (like a collision, or a break-in), Nexar automatically creates a clip that can be accessed through the app, along with the recordings of your drives.

Unfortunately, we knew from Support that users experience various key issues when trying to retrieve footage. Combining qualitative user research, product analytics and support tickets, I led our team through the redesign of the entire app from Onboarding and all the way to Settings.

Research

• Access is key
  One of the main reasons users choose Nexar over our competitors, is that our dash cams will stream and cache your drive to your phone in real-time. Having easy access to your latest videos anytime anywhere is a key value proposition of Nexar’s app.
• Mental model
  However, many users are confused that recent videos appear in the app, while older ones can only be found among myriad cryptic folders on the SD card, and only some videos are actually backed to the Nexar Cloud.
  //don’t want to mess with the SD card + requires re-adjusting the dash cam position + confusing relative variable storage//
• Cloud backup
  Due to ambiguous copywriting on our website, most users think all of their drives are saved on Nexar’s ‘unlimited’ cloud. In reality, only clips get automatically backed up. But the real tragedy is they’ll only discover this misunderstanding in the very moment when they needed us most.
• Deletion cycle
  Another source of confusion

Design Sprint

Principles

• What You See Is What You Have

Onboarding

• Streaming optional
• Mounting videos
• Permissions

Timeline

Simpler mental model

The first thing we changed about the Videos tab is we made it show all of the user’s videos, regardless of whether they lived on the dash cam’s SD card, had been cached to the user’s phone for easy access, or saved to their Nexar Cloud. //Can now browse and access videos on the SD card directly through the app//

One unified timeline

Taking further the principle of What You See Is What You Have, we merged the separate Clips and Drives tabs into one unified timeline of all their videos. This enabled us to associate clips with their drives, and introduce Bulk Delete (the most requested feature in our Customer Support analysis). //Large date dividers because time is the main way people retrieve videos//

Smaller and richer cards

Something we heard again and again in the research is that the large video cards caused a lot of scrolling, and the thumbnail images weren’t that useful. We challenged ourselves to both reduce the cards and increase the useful information by which users could find the video they’re looking for. This led us to include the destination of the drive, and label clips by category (eg. hard brake, parking incident, etc).

Videos

Consistent layout

One of the primary usability issues with the Drive Summary screen was that users often didn’t know they could swipe left to see the route on a map. We took this opportunity to introduce a cohesive layout between Clips and Drives, and made the map interactive to better situate the video’s location.

Interactive trimmer

By displaying the map above the video, we were also able to create a richer experience when a user creates a clip from a drive. As the user drag-selects the desired video length, the map now highlights the corresponding route segment in real time.

New sharing options

We knew from support tickets that users often failed to share clips because even short videos result in fairly large files. Since all clips are automatically uploaded to the Nexar Cloud, we decided to let users choose between sending clips as a file, or sharing them as a link. //Embedded Insurance Report and Publish with Nexar in the new Share menu//

Settings

Although not initially part of the scope for this redesign, I was able to advocate for a handful of small changes that would have the most impact on our user’s experience, and subsequently reduce support tickets. Two improvements worth highlighting here:

1. Information architecture
   To help users find what they’re looking for, we created a better information architecture by introducing 3 clear sections: Account, Dash Cam, and Help.
2. Copywriting
   To clarify what some of the more confusing settings actually do, we added small explainers below them with a link to more information on our Help Center.

Next steps

• Notification first time a user’s video gets deleted
• Swipe videos to delete
• Notification management in Settings
• “Can’t find your video?” banner

Acknowledgements

Head of Design and supportive thought-partner Teddy Cohen · Fellow product designers on this collective journey Peninah Kaplansky, Adi Klag and Guy Tamam · Dedicated Product Managers Dan Comyns, Tal Shriki, Adiela Gonen and Orit Levy · Tireless mobile engineers Anton Aizenberg, Chen Kazaz, Renen Avneri, Dor Avraham, Guy Shaviv, Shimon Azulay, Denis Chernyi, Halyna Halkina, Roman Leizerovich, and Upteam · Determined QA Engineers Yaron Blum, Avishy Leuchter and Ayal Marom · And many talented Nexarians who made this comprehensive redesign possible.

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