From 8 Hours to 5 Minutes: How Commend Validated a Radical Setup Reduction with Userbrain
Commend designs mission-critical communication systems for environments where reliability is non-negotiable: airports, hospitals, logistics hubs, prisons, and public infrastructure across more than 24 countries. Driven by customer needs, Commend creates tailored solutions that perform when it matters most. For over 50 years, their technology has spent decades earning its reputation at the hardest end of the intercom market.
So when the team set out to redesign their configuration platform — targeting a reduction in system setup from 8 hours to 5 minutes — the ambition was matched by the stakes. Integrators and system operators who trusted Commend for critical infrastructure needed a tool that worked exactly as promised.
Proving that certainty required real users.
Two Weeks from Question to Answer
Commend's UX team was small: two designers responsible for a specialised portfolio of B2B products. Their users weren't casual consumers — they were integrators and technicians who knew the old systems deeply. Getting research right mattered.
The old process left little room for iteration. Testing was tied to customer site visits and on-site research trips. Preparing sessions, travelling, recording, and working through results ate through weeks of calendar.
"From deciding that we want to test something until we actually had insights, it usually took around two weeks."
Two weeks might fit a quarterly roadmap cycle. It doesn't work when you're iterating on whether an 8-hour setup process can become a 5-minute one.
Testing Without the Wait
With Userbrain, the pace of research changed immediately. Setting up a test went from a weeks-long coordination effort to something that could happen in an afternoon. AI-generated task scenarios meant even highly specialised testing — for intercom security system configurations — didn't require writing everything from scratch.
Remote sessions brought real customers, partners, and integrators into the process without travel. Automatic transcripts and AI-generated summaries replaced manual analysis. Findings circulated as clips and quotes rather than reports that sat in shared drives.
"Userbrain changed our entire research workflow — from preparation to analysis — making the process faster, smoother, and far more effective."
What had been a rare, heavyweight event became continuous.
8 Hours to 5 Minutes. Measured.
The decisive project was Symphony Config — Commend's new web-based configuration platform, built to replace decades-old desktop tools. At its centre was the new Quick Start Assistant: a step-by-step setup flow that automatically detects devices on premise, recognises them as call triggers or receivers, and lets operators assign everything with drag and drop in just a few clicks.
The target was specific: cut initial system setup from an average of 8 hours to under 5 minutes, without losing the depth that professional integrators needed. The team used Userbrain to run structured tests with realistic scenarios. Integrators or building operators worked through real device configurations, and got an intercom network operational. Time on task was tracked directly.
"We were able to clearly show that five minutes is achievable. Even if some users needed eight or ten minutes, that's still a massive improvement over four to eight hours."
Beyond the numbers, the reactions from users who knew the old system were immediate and unambiguous. That firsthand contrast gave the team something quantitative data alone couldn't provide.
No Longer a UX Opinion
One of the most significant outcomes wasn't a time metric. It was a shift in how product decisions got made inside Commend.
Because tests happened continuously, the UX team didn't have to argue from principles. They could show a clip.
"If a manager recognises the customer's voice in a clip and hears them say 'this is confusing,' that carries a lot of weight."
One project alone logged close to 40 tests. Customer visits now regularly include some form of testing. Userbrain summaries and recordings circulate across product teams and into management. What started as a tool became the shared language of how Commend makes product decisions.
"Userbrain made our research transparent. People no longer think UX decisions are just opinions. They see the evidence."
Results at a Glance
| Before | With Userbrain | |
|---|---|---|
| Average system setup time | ~8 hours | ~5 minutes |
| Time from test decision to insights | ~2 weeks | Minutes to hours |
| Research preparation and analysis | Mostly manual | Largely automated |
| Testing frequency | Occasional | Continuous |
| Stakeholder access to findings | Limited | Company-wide |
