Case Study: iControl Out of Box Experience (OOBE) Usability Testing
iControl partnered with Progress to improve the first-time experience of Piper, an innovative smart home security device—from opening the box through setup, installation, and first use.
The success of a connected product depends on much more than its hardware. The first few minutes determine whether customers feel confident and capable—or frustrated enough to abandon the experience. Progress helped iControl understand that journey from the customer’s perspective and identify opportunities to make it simpler, clearer, and more intuitive.
Our Approach
Progress designed and led a comprehensive out-of-box experience research program that combined contextual inquiry, usability testing, and iterative evaluation.
Our team:
Recruited participants who reflected Piper’s target customers.
Planned and moderated in-home usability sessions where participants unboxed, installed, and configured Piper in their own environment.
Live-streamed sessions so designers, product managers, and stakeholders could observe customer behavior in real time.
Identified points of confusion, unmet expectations, and opportunities throughout the physical and digital setup experience.
Delivered actionable findings and prioritized recommendations through a detailed research report and stakeholder presentations.
Conducted follow-up usability testing to validate design improvements and measure progress.
Impact
Observing customers in their homes revealed opportunities that would have been difficult to uncover in a laboratory setting. Beyond identifying usability issues, the research helped the iControl team better understand customers’ expectations during setup and the relationship between hardware, packaging, documentation, and the mobile application.
The findings informed improvements to the onboarding experience, packaging, user interface, and installation process, resulting in a smoother first-time experience for new customers.
““Progress works with us to turn around projects on tight timelines. We keep in close contact throughout the research process to tweak methods and talk to the researchers about patterns they are seeing or the concerns of our designers. We’ve worked with them on a whole range of studies including industrial design, usability testing, and A/B comparison and are consistently impressed with the results.””
How Out-of-Box Experience Studies Can Work for You
Whether you’re launching a new product or refining an existing one, out-of-box experience (OOBE) studies reveal how customers navigate setup, installation, and first use in their own environment. By observing real-world behavior from the moment the box is opened, we uncover opportunities to simplify onboarding, reduce friction, and create a more confident first experience.