Case study · Bell Canada · Usability

Reframing Wi-Fi Check-Up from bad news to solutions

Bell's Wi-Fi Check-Up tool analyzed home Wi-Fi and suggested quick fixes, but it was built without user research. My team showed what it felt like to use, and redesigned it around solutions.

Role: Senior Manager, UX Research and Design When: 2021–2024 Focus: Research strategy, content strategy

The challenge

This was one of the first challenges for my newly merged team, which brought together design thinking specialists and UX designers for internal products. In-house Wi-Fi experts had built the tool, and it had real usability problems:

  • Red and green status icons with no shape difference, so colour-blind users couldn't tell them apart.
  • A long list of "disconnected" devices on opening, which felt like a bad news story.
  • Many people didn't distinguish Wi-Fi from internet, and technical language widened the gap.
  • Many fixes pointed to buying Wi-Fi extenders, so people felt upsold instead of helped.

How might we build on the existing design while helping people understand their Wi-Fi and use the tool, so fewer issues escalate?

What we did

  • Ran moderated usability interviews with both tech-savvy and less technical customers.
  • Surveyed a broad group of users about terminology and expectations, and tested with UserTesting and Bell's research community, pulling everything together in Miro.
  • Showed leadership the emotional impact of the negative messaging. Reframing the tool from "reporting problems" to "offering solutions" won their buy-in.
  • Simplified the interface, added a clear summary of what's working and what isn't, defined Wi-Fi versus internet in plain language, and added shapes to status indicators.

Outcome

15%
projected increase in user acceptance of the tool
20%
of users redirected to more helpful tools for their real issue
  • The UX team moved under the Strategy Director, so we were involved earlier in projects.
  • We created a UX research database to support ongoing product strategy and roadmapping.

Lessons learned

Research early. Waiting until after launch leads to costly redesigns.

Language matters. Technical accuracy shouldn't come at the cost of usability.

Buy-in comes from stories. Showing the emotional impact persuaded leadership more than data alone.

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