The Relay app had to serve three separate functions for users: managing Relay devices, tracking location, and enabling push-to-talk communication.
We wanted the communication tool to look and act like the physical Relay device as much as possible, maintaining consistency between the hardware interaction pattern and the app interface.
User experience strategy, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, system diagrams, wireframes, UI design, prototyping, usability testing.
We designed the IA solution after watching beta testers in the field.
- Device management moved to the side nav: users said they rarely needed to configure devices after initial activation
- The shop icon was made more prominent by adding it to the home screen
- A large single button in the center mirrors the industrial design of the physical device, creating consistency between hardware and software
Since Relay devices had no screens, all complex interactions were offloaded to the app. We had no clear data on users' mental models: did they think of channels first, or devices first?
We designed the IA to support both mental models and watched analytics to see how users navigated. Most went to channels first, then selected the Relay device they wanted to manage from there.
