Envoy Emergency Notifications

User Problem / Opportunity

Through regular check-ins with company admins, we uncovered a recurring need: a reliable way to communicate urgent, location-specific information to employees and visitors. Existing systems—typically email, Slack, or Teams—had serious limitations: they were often missed, only reached employees (not visitors), and couldn’t target people actually on-site. Envoy, already tracking real-time presence through sign-ins and desk bookings, was uniquely positioned to solve this. This insight led us to kick off the Emergency Notifications project to deliver timely, relevant alerts when and where they mattered most.

Business Goals

Identify a new Envoy product that will drive upsell opportunities when bundled with a new higher-tier product suite.

KPI: 10% of enterprise customers to activate feature within 30 days of release.

Role

Sole Product Designer

Worked with a team of ~6 engineers to implement

Project Timeline

6 weeks

Responsibilities

User Research
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
Visual Design

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Qualitative Research

As part of our ongoing monthly calls with enterprise admins, the PM and I gathered insights on how customers used Envoy and where they faced friction. A consistent theme emerged: nearly all had a manual, unreliable way of sending emergency notifications—typically via email or Slack/Teams. These systems were limited in reach, often missed by employees, excluded visitors, and couldn’t target people actually on-site. Recognizing that Envoy already had real-time presence data, we saw a clear opportunity to solve this problem in a more intelligent, integrated way.

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Project Planning

To scope the feature and deliver value quickly, I created a user story map based on the most urgent needs we heard from enterprise admins. I broke the work into five milestone releases, starting with the simplest version: sending SMS alerts to employees. Each milestone added meaningful functionality while minimizing risk—such as support for visitors, delivery logs, alternate delivery methods like push and email, and ways to ensure admins had complete contact info for all recipients.

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Design Iteration

In this first milestone, we focused on delivering urgent SMS notifications to employees through two primary entry points on the mobile interface. One was the plus symbol in the home header, while the other was a new link under the “More to Explore” button. As part of the iteration, we discovered that users gravitated toward the “More to Explore” link, prompting us to rethink the plus symbol's placement in future updates.