Fing Home Networking App

Domotz is a startup that develops home networking tools for big box retailers and professional installers. Fing is the top-rated network scanning app in the iOS and Android app stores. 6 million people use Fing to perform over 600,000 scans per day. Domotz acquired Fing to expand into the consumer space, then hired my team to redesign the UI and help devise a monetisation strategy that wouldn’t alienate its existing users.

I planned the 6-week project and lead a core team of a UX designer, a researcher, a project manager, and one in-house UI designer. We started with a stakeholder workshop, competitor analysis, remote user interviews, a heuristic review of the app, and analysis of user reviews and a marketing survey to better understand Fing and its users. The team then designed in quick iterations, reviewing progress with Domotz’s founder daily and with engineers as-needed. We held formal reviews each week, and conducted two rounds of user testing before proceeding to detailed UI design.

Research revealed Fing users often helped manage networks for friends and family, so we added the ability to save networks they scanned. Many were also gamers, so we enabled them to check the speed to a selected server, such as a gaming service. These features encouraged users to sign up for a free cloud account — a first step in converting free users to paid subscribers. To help build Domotz’s trove of user and device data, we added a barcode scanner to ease adding devices to the app. Once added, users could view device information and add and read device reviews.

Domotz’s founder was thrilled with the new design, and with our incremental plan for converting free users to paid subscribers. He was also complementary of our team and the way our process challenged and sharpened his thinking.