How UX design can improve the IoT experience?
An era has come where things are communicating among themselves and hence, the Internet of Things (IoT) is performing perfectly well. IoT is the most sought out technology right now with multiple startups thriving in the global scenario.
Industrial designing and the User Interface of an IoT product (device or application) is the by far the most visible and noticeable feature in the app.
No doubt your product may contain loads of potential and useful content and that may be of great help to the user. But if the UX design of your product is not that user-friendly and easy, then the whole effort that you have put into it will be gone in vain.
UX thus plays a most significant role in enhancing user experience with the product and make it easy and influencing for the user.
How do you probe into IoT Experience with UX design?
IoT products are very smart, sensitive and accurate. Whilst their programming is quite simple, their behavior patterns are a little complex to keep track of. Thus, to make them easier to use, you need to properly design the whole user interface.
Certain steps need to be taken to achieve good IoT experience with UX design:
First, you need to comprehend the differences in the way you need to do the UX design for IoT applications and devices. Different devices or applications need different kinds of UX. Even the purpose or professional domain of the group also affects UX design for the IoT device.
Second, you need to learn the key features which that particular product is going to be designed for. The UX designer should also understand that the IoT device experience is the only thing that interacts with users and influences them to use it again, so the user must be able to access key features easily. You also need to think of maintaining features such as latency, consistency, and the reliability of the device.
How can the UX design improve the IoT experience?
Since there are many platforms on which one IoT product is based, you need to build user experience (UX) that is consistent and enables a smooth experience on each platform. It should be precise in a way that the users can easily jump from one feature to another while using the IoT product.
Now, IoT systems or the devices are mainly related to the home appliances, industrial machines, vehicles and some infrastructure related to buildings (sensor doors, street lights, lifts). Hence, the user experience should be designed as per their real-life applications.
You also need to build predictive and intuitive user experience models which can perform the cross-device user flows and have the power to integrate with other IoT products in daily life.
Here are some more ways in which you can bring change into the UX design to make IoT experience better:
Easy Onboarding
Many a times, there are a lot of onboarding processes for connecting goods where you need to undergo various gateways, for instance, Gmail. You need to create a user experience where the user can connect with all their smart devices like doorbells, washing machine, AC, etc. through a single app. If you simply authenticate the onboarding, then the user can be in control of all their smart devices which are connected via an app with the help of IoT.
Cloud is the savior!
Relate with the cloud as much as you can when you are developing a profound user experience, because almost every IoT product or a smart system uses a cloud for multiple purposes such as database management and storage. Also, you get to have smoother transitions from one premise to another.
Coherent system
You need to create a coherent system for the users along with determining the right composition. Your user experience design should prepare to answer questions such as:
- What do the users expect?
- Will the system work if some of the connected devices are unavailable?
- Will the sensing of a particular parameter be accurate?
- Will there be a regular update of features?
Easy User Experience
If the user experience is consistent across all the IoT devices, the users will enjoy using the IoT design and will feel easier to understand the product. Consistency means that the users should not care much about the various words of content because the actions and situations lead into the same way. They need to have interaction architecture which deals about how the whole tasks are going to be executed.
Interactive User experience
Continuity in the user experience of the IoT devices means that the flow of the minute of the interactions and data transfer has to happen across all platforms and devices in a particular sequence.
So, if there is continuity, then the user wouldn’t feel that he is interacting with various devices but one. A continuous user experience design is always going to help improve the whole IoT experience.
Reliability factor
When a user purchases a smart TV or a fridge or an IoT driven washing machine, then the user would want to rely on the features of the systems. For example, busy professionals are highly reliant on the away from home or delay wash features. If you are not providing a user experience design where if they click an option on the app and that particular function is executing, then they will be in loss. Thus, to make sure such mistakes do not happen, we should create a reliable user experience for every user at any instance of time.
Safety
Every system which is made in the world has to consider the safety options. Security is a priority for any product that has been developing. Thus, when you are building the user interface for a better experience, the safety factor has to be considered.
If there are any alert messages, they should properly display at a position where the user can easily notice. In addition, it should be in an easily readable or accessible format. Also, regular updates of how the device is performing and the age of the device should also be considered.
Experience IoT with ease
Building a user experience which has the premonition ability is quite difficult. And designing the same in the domain of IoT is not that simple. This is because IoT is a group of devices which are spread and operated across multiple platforms.
There are multi interfaces and the functionalities also vary. Thus, to keep the track of all the data streams and the user privacy, rights in mind, you need to design the whole user experience for this slight complex model.
