Whole Home Test
Timeframe: 6 months
Role: UX/UI design, research collab, prototyping, eng hand-off
Impact: 20% reduction in truck roll rates and 27% reduction in call rates
WiFi is complicated. The Whole Home Test is a self-service solution to help Xfinity customers know what they’re testing, understand the results, and troubleshoot any issues they have without calling Comcast. Over 135k users run a Whole Home Test each week. My goal was to improve upon our existing tests to maximize user adoption. This test has had a huge impact on the business leading to a 20% reduction in truck roll rates and a 27% reduction in call rates among speed testers.
Current Gateway Speed Test
The current Gateway Speed Test currently runs an outage check and a speed test from the internet to your gateway. In the results page, users can see their Gateway speed as well as a list of their connected devices. Users can run individual device speed tests for each of their devices, but this means having to click through each device one at a time.
Previous research had shown that while users thought the existing Gateway Speed Test was an appealing tool, customers were still confused about the source of the connectivity issue, and unsure how to solve the problem. There was a lack of a clear path to problem-solving that left participants frustrated.
Research
“This tool allows you to find out what is wrong with my network. It points out the reason why I am having connectivity problems. That way we know exactly what is the problem and what to do to solve the issue.” - Participant “What I like most about this tool is how quick and easy it was to use. It was very intuitive. It gave me instantaneous results that were detailed. It gave me follow up options of testing again, or if I was still having an issue that there was more information. So it didn't just stop at the speed test and leave me hanging. It provided me with sort of whatever my next steps might be if I wanted to conduct the test again and try it out or go through the experience of troubleshooting other areas.” - ParticipantI worked with our UX research team to do an unmoderated study on the introduction of an automatic progressive test of all connected devices in the Whole Home Test results page.
Results showed that automatic progressive testing of the full network, after Gateway speed test, was a delighter, as it:
Quickly showed the source of the signal issue
Gave participants the full benefit from blaster capabilities
Reinforced what was being tested
Reinforced distinction between Gateway speed and device speed
Full network picture provided a quicker path to troubleshooting
Emphasized the issue was not due to Xfinity
More importantly, it successfully steered participants in the path of problem resolution without calling Comcast.
Solution: a progressive test
Whole Home Test = Outage check + Gateway speed test + Single device blast
Based on those results, I added progressive testing on all devices connected to the Gateway in the final results page of the test. This makes the Whole Home Test more powerful since users can see the health of their network all in one snapshot. By adding in blaster to run a speed test on all the devices automatically, this allowed users to have a clear path to troubleshooting. They can tap on devices that we detect have fair or weak connectivity and go to the single device results page. There, they will be tailored troubleshooting tips to help remediate the issue.
