Permission Groups and Access Management
Overview
The ButterflyMX Operating System was created for managing access into apartment buildings with our flagship product, the smart video intercom. As the company planned to invest in more hardware products to control additional spaces throughout a building or property, buildings will require an easy and flexible way to manage who has access to certain areas and when they are allowed to access these spaces.
Problem
Property access was being managed by “zones” which was initially created to differentiate access at a location or building level - this means that properties that have 2 intercoms for separate buildings will only allow residents access to their respective building. The majority of buildings have a single zone and didn’t allow other areas to be controlled within a building. We needed to allow managers to define permissions at the people level to make sure the right people get access to the right areas at the right times.
Goal
Our goal was to come up with a solution that would allow property managers to easily manage access for their residents, staff, and other groups while maintaining security and convenience for the building, and scale as new devices were offered to control additional access to doors and spaces.
Project Context
This was my first project working alongside our sole product manager who was leading this product initiative. It was a great opportunity to be “the new guy” and learn as much as possible about the access control space and how buildings were currently setup with our devices.
We worked closely with our internal SMEs across our Technical Project and Installation teams to understand how these systems work and how zones were currently set up. We also worked closely with our Client Success team to understand property managers perspective, their current pain points and how they would expect to setup and manage permission groups. This helped us define the key user stories we needed to begin thinking through how a property manager might do this in our system.
Competitive Analysis
Being fairly new to the world of property technology, I wanted to investigate how some of our competitors were achieving this and in what ways they were enabling access control for their properties. What did these systems look like? What were the core requirements for a property to create a permission group? How simple or complex were the processes for setting these up?
I looked at 3 companies - Latch, PDK, and Kisi. I found many of the permission groups were defined by the role or type of person associated with the building. This could be the resident, security personnel, maintenance staff, or service providers like delivery folks and internet providers. These groups consisted of doors, their time constraints, and a list of people that have been added. This helped inform the flows we began to build based on our key stories.
User Stories and Flows
As a tenant, I want to use my phone to access the roof area, so I have the same convenience and flexibility to access my building's common spaces as I do with the front door.
As a property manager, I want to restrict tenant's access to the roof after 11 PM and before 6 AM.
As a property manager, I want to allow my cleaning staff and maintenance staff access to the roof at all times.
As a property manager, I want to allow paying tenants to access the gym, while denying access to other tenants.
User Flows for Permission Groups
Ideation
After defining the key flows for this experience we moved into a quick ideation phase to determine a design POC. We settled on 2 potential design directions for the permission groups page and decided to create an A/B test to settle which concept made more sense and how well property managers understood how to successfully create and set up their permission groups.
User Testing
We created a usability test plan and launched 2 studies with 10 property managers each through userzoom. We screened our participants to target property managers through a series of qualifying questions. Once qualified we started with a survey to gather a better understanding of their current building and managing responsibilities. Then using 2 prototypes, our goal was to validate our key tasks and collect as much feedback as possible.
Key tasks to validate
Creating a new permission group
Adding people to a new group
Adding people to an existing group
Adding doors to a new group
Adding doors to an existing group
Specifying a time range for a door in a group
User Test Results and Takeaways
10 participants
2 tests (5 users each)
8 tasks
Success Completion rate: 95%
Average time: 14:00 minutes
Complete User Testing Results: Permission Groups and Access
User Testing Permission Groups Presentation
Table vs. Matrix UI
After observing how these performed we decided to go with a more traditional table UI. This design was less confusing and allowed for more information to be displayed and scanned easily.
Highlights
Organized by person type or role
Most property managers expected to be able to group access by the role of the person associated with the building and add doors based on their level of access.
Most mentioned that they liked having one place (centralized) to manage their doors and the people that should have access to them.
Successful flow and prototype completion
All test participants completed the prototype test through to the end. Despite mild confusion due to testing constraints, all individuals were able to resolve any issues and move forward.
Intuitive and User-friendly
100% of property managers said this experience was better than their current solution. Participants mentioned it was clear, straightforward, simple, centralized and flexible. Our experience was noted as being less complex and easier to understand than their current management systems, which was also proven through the speed and accuracy of completing this test.
On average it took users approx. 14 minutes to complete this test.
Quotes:
“More user-friendly experience that is all centralized in one place. Makes things a lot easier to do based on what I have seen today and compared to the system that I currently use.”
“This experience is far better than the one I currently use. This experience is logical, intuitive, organized, and clean. My current platform is slow, awkward, and archaic.”
“There is that high ended flexibility for me to be able to manage my access control seamlessly as compared to what I am used to. So far I like what I see.”
Lowlights
Adding/Removing users
We noticed many expected to click the checkbox next to the user name to add the user to the group. They also mentioned having an area where they could see who was added separately from the full list
Users expected a separate section showing a list of people that had been added to the group.
Also many expected to use the search feature to find users to add to the group.
Checkboxes
While many of the checkboxes were not clickable, we noticed it was common that users expected to interact with them to add users and specify access.
Taxonomy and icons
We learned that some of the language and icons we used were confusing and didnt help communicate the intended action or status.
Final Wires
Outcomes
Challenges and Implementation
Lack of front-end resources
Framework constraints (Bootstrap 3)
No established design system
The majority of our developers were backend focused and were not well versed in front-end development
Sharing our sole front-end developer across projects
Pushing for quality UX and interactions over predefined component styles
Metrics since Launch
Access Management went live in Dec. 2020, and was later announced in Jan. 2021.
All 6,529 Buildings (100%) went live with access management and permission groups
This means that every building had at least 1 default permission group set up to allow access in their building or property.
Essentially any property with 1 “zone” would have an easy transition to access groups as the permissions would be the same and require no action on the property manager.
The only difference is now they have the ability to add additional ButterflyMX devices to other doors and areas of their property and create specified access for different people through the release of this feature
As of today…
The majority of buildings with more than one zone successfully updated their permission groups.
421 properties had more than one zone set up for their property. Of these - 322 (76%) created at least 1 additional permission group to set up differentiated access in their building.
Here are some of the ways we learned buildings set up their permission groups and access for the people associated with their building:
by building or location (same as zones)
By floors
By limited or restricted access (staff, owner, etc.)
Commercial vs. residential access
By Paid Amenity
Access Management and Permission Groups established a crucial layer required for us to scale our devices, feature offerings, and access control throughout the building. Because of this we are able to partner with more solutions and make our products and services more valuable, desirable, and sticky for our clients and their building needs.
We have grown our device offering from just intercoms to include:
Keypads
Smart Locks
Elevator Controls
Key Lockers