9 Ways IoT Is Redefining Web Design and Development Process

IoT is officially mainstream now. Today, there is hardly any industry or market segment that is yet to witness the benefits and potential of IoT. From healthcare and the surveillance industry to retail and manufacturing divisions, the wave of IoT seems to be conquering and influencing them all.

Whenever an innovative technology gradually transitions into becoming mainstream, concepts and entities in its circumference tend to evolve and become more unified as well. In that sense, what is being increasingly discussed, explored, and experimented with is IoT design and development.

How?

Let’s find out but before that, let’s understand why there is an evolution in this spectrum in the first place.

Why Is IoT Changing Design and Development Standards?

IoT is non-linear. It’s an amalgamation of multiple devices and sensors working together to accomplish a common goal. For instance, you could have RFIDs, GPS units, microcontrollers and more in a single ecosystem. While this work together, these sensors and devices are also microunits that can operate as standalone systems.

This makes every device independent with its own distinct set of protocols, UI, operational mechanisms, and standards. Imagine an IoT ecosystem of 5 or more such independent devices, how do you combine them and offer a unified solution to an end user?

The only practical solution to achieve this is by developing a common ground through efficient web design, tailored towards tunneling all diverse aspects of devices into one end-to-end unit.

We are exactly at that point in IoT evolution.

With statistics reporting the number of connected devices to be around 75bn by the end of 2025, this is the perfect time to develop unified web design standards and protocols for seamless integrations and interoperability. This will ensure data from devices — regardless of whether they are refrigerators, smart televisions, or automobiles — everything is presented in a format that is universal just like how our websites and the internet operate.

How Is IoT Changing Design and Development?

For the uninitiated, IoT has already commenced influencing web design and development standards across industries. Unlike other tech solutions and concepts, IoT has niche requirements in terms of web development as multiple devices and factors are involved. IoT also relies on equally sophisticated technologies like data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and more to deliver desired results. That’s why IoT demands a strong relationship between frontend and backend.

So, to give you a quick idea on this, here are 9 Ways IoT Is redefining web design and development

Sturdy Backend Functionality

The communication among devices and users is crucial and even a lag of split second can change the entire course of results. That’s why IoT dictates the need for a sturdy backend functionality. This demand has led to optimization in the way backend development happens in terms of tech stack and architecture and is gradually making communication more seamless.

Integration Of Chatbots

Chatbots are probably the most in-demand entities on the internet today. Every business aims at deploying a chatbot to offer improved customer service, generate and qualify leads and do more. With IoT, the integration of chatbot is becoming more prominent as well. Companies want to keep the entire IoT ecosystem free of human interaction and chatbots are doing an excellent job at this.

Improved Privacy and Security

Now, IoT is an ecosystem that has several devices connected to the internet. For a poorly configured network, every device could be a potential loophole for attackers to gain access. That’s why data safety, security and privacy are of utmost importance in the IoT space. IoT developers are extensively working on building solid and airtight encryption mechanisms and architectures to ensure optimal data security. With protocols such as GDPR, HIPAA and more on the rise, this aspect could make or break a company.

Create Dynamic User Interfaces

IoT has the power and potential to uncover crucial insights, detect operational loopholes, find angles for more RoI and performance optimization and more.

Agreed.

However, the entire purpose of IoT and its deployment would mean futile if the massive volumes of data it processes are not visualized properly and presented to end users in a way that is comprehensible to them.

That’s where the development of efficient and dynamic user interfaces come in. Only when users have intuitional access to information and the ways they could accomplish tasks based on them will they find their IoT installations meaningful. That’s why developers and designers are striving to push boundaries on simplifying user interfaces, making CTAs and text more actionable and wireframes more fluid and leading.

Speed Optimization

Unlike the internet, where communication is more streamlined with data coming in through a server, the IoT ecosystem is more complex. There are multiple devices beaming inputs every second and every bit of information carries equal weightage for processing. That’s why sophisticated cloud solutions and practices are being worked on to improve the speed of communication among devices as well. Imagine a connected car on autopilot crashing onto a mailbox because information from sensors got delayed by a microsecond.

Efficient Data Transmission

Let’s extend the previous example for this as well. A solution like an autonomous car (any IoT solution for that matter) has massive volumes of data generated every single second. These are data from a myriad of sensors and devices attached to the car. When such volumes of data are transmitted, there is bound to be data loss, distortion, lag, crashes and more. So, IoT demands the integration of advanced Big Data systems to manage mammoth data generation, transmission, and processing. Scalable cloud systems are the need of the hour.

Insightful Data Analytics

Data analytics lies at the heart of IoT and its operations. There are two aspects to this:

● Data analytics that empowers humans with insights they never knew existed and help them with better supporting factors for optimized decision making

● Data analytics that complement wings such as predictive and prescriptive analytics, where data generated with the help of historical data work on predicting an occurrence in advance.

Both are equally crucial in the IoT spectrum. For instance, in smart grids, analytics and visualization can help humans know how much electricity they spend on and through what sources. Similarly, predictive analytics can help manufacturers know in advance a probable equipment failure and call for service technicians proactively. So, developers are vested with the responsibility to develop interfaces, algorithms, and modules to accommodate data analytics in the process.

Power Management

A major chunk of the IoT system is wireless. Meaning, several IoT devices operate out of batteries. When powerful data generation and processing happen at the backend, batteries automatically tend to drain out faster than usual. That’s why manufacturers and developers are also working on developing energy-efficient devices and software systems. There is no point in having an IoT system that requires human intervention every few days or weeks.

Eradicate Coding Challenges

Coding for IoT comes with unique sets of requirements, protocols, and challenges. As IoT keeps evolving, managers and developers are poised with the challenge of keeping up with newer and evolved coding strategies for their IoT solutions. They are also working on developing knowledge banks, best practices, and portals to store and archive all coding standards deployed and tested so far.

Wrapping Up

The revolution on IoT web design and development is just getting started. As more IoT development solutions protocols are established and rolled out, it will be interesting to see how much more efficient and scalable IoT systems become. What else do you think would be a norm in terms of IoT web design and development?