BSH Multi-Brand User Accounts

Web UX Communication Strategy

A subtle choice of wording to guide users through a backend migration of user accounts.

Context

BSH is the largest manufacturer of home appliances in Europe and one of the leading companies in the sector worldwide. BSH is the umbrella brand for many home appliance brands such as Bosch, Gaggenau, Siemens, Neff, and more. As experts in hardware but with limited digital experience, I supported BSH with their online UX communication strategy.

Problem

A single customer might have separate online accounts for each of the BSH brands. As these accounts are not connected to one another, BSH aimed to migrate these accounts in the backend to a single account while retaining individual brand identity on the frontend. How can we communicate the transfer of users' data in a transparent and easy-to-understand way while retaining each individual brand?

Role

I guided the BSH project team through communication exploration, generating user-flows and visualising concept architectures for internal stakeholder presentations. I worked closely with the Project Manager to understand internal corporate stakeholder tensions and presented solutions to the project owner and brand managers.

Impact

By deciding on a subtle choice of wording, the proposed solutions for user testing aim to give the user just the right amount of information for BSH to be transparent without overwhelming the user with technical complexity. The client was consulted on further product development with these solutions in mind to mitigate risk of developing a very expensive solution based on no user feedback.

This is really great work, again, that will help us argue for the best user-focussed solution internally with the other departments. Thank you!

- Christoph Gottschalk, Project Owner, BSH

Architecture Visualisations

To illustrate communication strategies for the team, I visualised what we would be communicating to the user. The images below show the difference between talking about "connecting" existing accounts or "transferring" all accounts to a single account.

"All your individual brand accounts are connected"
"All brands share the same account"
Click dummy prototypes for user testing