PURPOSE

BuzzBell was built to bring peace of mind by giving users a way to reliably contact people during critical moments, using patented technology that bypasses silent settings.

TIMELINE

6-month Lean UX process from August 28, 2020 – April 15, 2021.

TEAM SIZE

As a founding designer, I led competitive research, scenario development, & UI prototyping, and trained our 5-person design team on Figma. 22 employees contributed across phases.

BuzzBell evolved from our earlier product, NeedUNow (NUN), which let users send alerts that bypassed 'Silent' & 'Do Not Disturb' settings.

Alerts triggered an audible ring the recipient could only silence by opening the app.

A survey of 9 users revealed:

• NUN felt limited to “negative” emergencies

• Users wanted ‘Silent’-override alerts integrated with messaging or social platforms

I conducted a competitive analysis of popular messaging apps - Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Viber, & WhatsApp - to identify gaps and opportunities.

From this, we prioritized 8 core messaging features:
• 1-on-1 & group chats
• Voice calls (non-override)
• Multimedia & document sharing
• Read receipts & reactions
• End-to-end encryption & data privacy

An important pain point emerged during a weekly creative brainstorm: NUN alerts were only audible, risking disruption in quiet settings.

Solution: What if it made the device vibrate?
After proven feasible, we rebranded our ‘Silent’-override feature to BuzzBell - ‘Buzz’ for vibrational alerts, ‘Bell’ for audible alerts.

After defining 5 target user groups, I developed user scenarios (2 for ‘Buzz’, 3 for ‘Bell’), renewing our value proposition through the dualization of our patented offering, more nuanced and robust.

When it came time to prototype, I recommended switching from Photoshop & Illustrator to Figma for more collaborative wireframing. Upon approval, I trained our four designers on using it.

• Mid-fi prototype (“Day One”): Conveying “Peace of Mind” through diversity & inclusion.

• Hi-fi prototype (“Day Two”): A more universal interpretation of “Peace of Mind”, switching to a palette of accessible, “cooler” colors.

Both prototypes were refined weekly through iterative design.

In addition to owning specific sets of wireframes, each designer contributed distinctive inputs:
• Designer 1 - Brand guidelines
• Designer 2 - Icons
• Designer 3 - Dummy data
• Designer 4 - Illustrations
• Myself - UX writing (microcopy e.g. buttons, modals, PX copy), UI style guides, and UI component export

Testing real builds allowed early validation of real-world app behavior, user interactions, and bug detection.

Functional app builds were tested weekly by 17 users (10 iOS, 7 Android) via TestFlight & Firebase.

Product managers translated user reports into Figma comments for the design team to make iterations.

• Mid-fi feedback:
– Aesthetic more “feminine” than inclusive
– Confusion around “Peace of Mind” Mode
– Difficulty scrolling through contacts
– Glitches using emoji reactions

• Hi-fi feedback:
– Inclusive through accessible aesthetic
– “Peace of Mind” mode swapped for two toggles
– A-Z scale for rapid contact scolling
– Deleting emoji reactions

Iterative design allowed us to quickly adapt to user needs during high-stakes communication.

Bad news:
• Apple initially rejected our “Day One” build for bypassing ‘Do Not Disturb’, a system setting - requiring “Day Two” to only override ‘Silent’ on iOS.

Good news:
• “Day Two” successfully launched on the App Store and Play Store.
• BuzzBell was recognized by TIME’s 100 Best Inventions of 2021, validating our Lean UX approach.

• Lessons learned: prioritizing accessible colors earlier and defining key user personas would have streamlined actionable insights.

• Future growth might have involved offering our patented override system as SaaS APIs for broader adoption across competing messaging platforms.

• Led competitive analysis & problem reframing
• Co-defined target users & wrote user scenarios
• Formalized our value proposition
• Co-designed mid-fi & hi-fi prototypes
• Led UX writing, built UI Style Guides, and exported UI elements for developer hand-off