The KOLO Smart Monitoring System is a native application and web-based dashboard that helps ensure dispensers are stocked and bathroom fixtures are functional. Its value proposition focuses on reducing paper waste, conserving water, operating efficiently, and addressing the most significant opportunity for custodial staff: Getting them out of the bathroom.

The innovative Internet of Things (IoT) product connects high-traffic public washroom fixtures to the Internet, enabling cleaning staff to monitor supplies like toilet paper, paper towels, soap, and hand sanitizer within dispensers, as well as monitoring flush valves and water flow for leaks, malfunctions, or blockages.

KOLO had one challenge: Increase engagement with the product. I took a human-centered approach to learning about the value of the KOLO System through the eyes of facility administrators, staff and managers on-the-go, and patrons through field research, prototyping, and testing. Using this research, we developed a product that custodians and managers love.

Increasing engagement is a lot like solving a Rubik’s Cube: It’s impossible to solve one side at a time. The six sides of our Rubik’s Cube we needed to solve for were Platform Features, User Experience and Design, Delivering Value, Onboarding, Change Management, and Showing Proof of Efficacy. Raising engagement isn’t a simple challenge, and we wanted to look at the greatest points of leverage to reduce the barriers to engagement while developing a product that delivered the greatest value for all of its different users. These six areas became our focus.

The KOLO System collects real-time data across an entire facility, and there are numerous applications for that data—from creating traffic flows to cleaning routines, reporting on product consumption to customer satisfaction, and measuring engagement to monitoring progress. However, not every platform feature delivered the same value to each customer. And so we set out to understand how the KOLO System could be customized to deliver the right value in the right setting through its features.

Delivering value meant understanding what success looked like for customers, and that was different from place to place. The Atlanta Airport was focused on customer satisfaction and the traveler’s experience, while Expedia was focused on creating a clean and healthy workplace. In addition to facilities being different, the buyers and users were had vastly different needs.

To better understand our audiences, we created Personas (for users), Buyer Archetypes (for decision-makers), and Placeonas (to capture the differences among facilities).

To achieve some quick wins and quickly boost engagement, we conducted a heuristic analysis of both KOLO Clean (the app utilized by custodians) and the KOLO Central dashboard (used by facility managers). Throughout the project, we continued to improve both the user experience and design of the platform through agile updates to the user interface.

We also tested numerous report prototypes to learn from customers how they would use specific data visualizations and reports to optimize cleaning routines, staff schedules, and operations.