Yale & Assa Abloy

As one of the oldest international brands, Yale is among the most respected names in the lock industry, with millions of Yale locks in use worldwide.  Offering a broad portfolio of door hardware and locks to secure your home or business, Yale continues to innovate new products for both residential and commercial applications. Yale is owned by ASSA ABLOY, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. ASSA ABLOY is the global leader in door opening solutions.

I’ve worked closely with Yale’s Commerical division mobile team providing short-term design solutions for current app offerings as well as long-term planning and design for future app offerings over the past few years (2019 to present)

Recently I developed designs to support a new Commercial offering for the Accentra line of products. The app is called Yale Accentra Access. It provides residents the ability to link their access credentials for their residence to their mobile device for an additional method of unlocking. Residents can pair their lock with their device, as well as unlock their door using bluetooth and nfc technologies. It is available for both iOS and Android.

For this new product, I undertook not only new designs that incorporated Yale’s 2020 rebranding initiative, but also oversaw alpha-stage prototype interviews, as well as, beta-stage field studies. Dozens of hours of interviews were processed and designs were modified on the basis of this feedback. Historically – app design and development has been largely engineering driven so this focus on early-stage user feedback has been a game changer in recent app improvements.

This app has several complex interaction flows based on handing off secure credentials as well as working with hardware locks. It was important to make these processes feel simple and seamless to the end user. I implemented several step-based UI features to guide users through what was happening “in the cloud”. The app also features robust how-to guides and animations for any instance where a user may feel unsure or encounter a complication.

In addition to the Accentra Access app, I’ve also worked closely with technicians and installers on their own Yale Configuration app. We’ve worked to clarify and streamline aspects of their mobile tooling that they use to administrate the lock systems for large commercial installations. This work is ongoing and may see significant improvements in the near future.

Client Received:
Initial feature planning meetings
Detailed feature stories
High fidelity designs for iOS and Android
Email Invitation copy and design
Userflow document with action and behavior specs
Quality Assurance testing
Prototype based user interviews
Field trial user interviews & survey
Ongoing monthly retainer

Feedback from the Client:
“Jennifer consistently delivers great work, including quick and demo-able design prototypes, detailed design specs the dev team can easily follow, and thoughtful, opinionated design recommendations based on current UI/UX conventions. She has been patient and organized collecting feedback from early adopters and test subjects, allowing us to test and refine ideas in a much shorter cycle before we get to market. Her involvement has absolutely improved our team’s ability to create user-friendly and visually appealing interfaces by an order of magnitude.”
—RON UNGER, OWNER, UNGER SOFTWARE CONSULTING