GreatCall
Voicemail Experience
GreatCall specializes in creating devices for seniors that help them in an emergency situation with their 5 Star Urgent Response system. I was challenged with the task of creating an easy to use visual voicemail experience for an Android-based smartphone designed for 70+ year old, first-time smartphone users.
My Roles
Visual Design
UX Design
UI Design
Information Architecture
"Voicemail is an important phone feature for aging America. We often hear our customers talk about how they enjoy listening to their voicemail on their home (landline) phone."
Problems
The research team at GreatCall performed usability testing which identified 3 main problems:
Unfamiliar
Users are accustomed to accessing voicemail on their home (landline) phone and physical answering machines. They are not familiar with how smartphone devices work.
Tedious
Having to click each message to play back appears be a burden to some of our users.
Time Consuming
Many visual voicemails require too many clicks to find.
User Interviews
I did further research by conducting target user interviews to understand their difficulties. With a list of questions, I discovered many interesting insights I wouldn't have, just by going off the existing data from GreatCall. I compiled all of the information I received from my research, as well as pre-existing user tested data from GreatCall to create this persona to use as a guide for my design decisions.
Solutions
After gathering all the data I identified 3 main solutions to focus on implementing into the product design:
Unfamiliar
Familiar
Create a simple user experience similar to old answering machines that the user is familiar with
Tedious
User Friendly
Option to listen to all voicemails at one time
Time Consuming
Quick Access
As little clicks as possible to complete a task
Wireframes
After getting a clear idea of how the voicemail experience should function, I went on to create a wireframe to mold the interface into something a little more concrete. This allowed me to strictly focus on content without getting distracted by visual design elements.
For the final design I decided to go with more of a tactile look which is more familiar to the target user when using physical answering machines.
I used a very simple play, next, previous button as the main voicemail navigation similar to what would be found on old answering machines.
Things such as the settings that don’t have the highest priority have been tucked away in the hamburger menu.
I also added images of the caller which I found through my research to be important to the user.
