The race to develop connected products is on; manufacturers who want to develop truly innovative, user-friendly products need to have a clear vision of how connectivity contributes to user experience in order to succeed in this rapidly changing market.
The proliferation of smartphones is changing how we interact with our appliances --as to what specific features drive a successful product is still up for debate. Experience, user feedback and industry experts tell us that 3 principles must be followed when designing a home product that interfaces with a mobile app:
Keep it simple: a mobile app should simplify user experience (UX). Some manufacturers have caught the “IoT bug” and are rushing to release connected products that have a “wow factor” but complicate the UX. Nespresso recently released the Prodigio one-cup espresso maker, which uses a mobile app allowing users to order refills, remotely start brewing, and schedule brewing. Nespresso has solved the problem of needing to regularly replace pods, but the other features of the app actually complicate the UX. With a mobile app, users are still responsible for Steps 1 and 2, at which point, the remote capabilities of the app are simply moot.
Value-add with function: mobile apps must provide additional functionality. It is commonly accepted in appliance design that the number of features available on an appliance is limited by the number of elements that can be built into the appliance. This is why mobile apps can be so powerful: smartphone users are already familiar with UX paradigms of mobile apps, giving manufacturers the opportunity to add functions that were never before possible.
Know your user: a connected product must provide capabilities an advanced user would expect. The average user purchasing a connected home product is more likely to be an advanced user. Anova recently released a connected precision cooker that allows users to monitor and set cooking temperature and timers based on pre-conceived recipes in the app. Advanced users have been critical because it impossible to deviate from those recipes due to lack of a manual override feature.
When deciding how to augment a home product with a mobile app, we find it helpful to follow the above principles and to drive UX with key performance indicators. Identifying early on what KPIs to use (i.e., revenue generated, time on app, screens per action, etc.) will drive a highly functional yet intuitive app as well as actionable iterations of the UI/UX and product design. The age of connected devices is changing how users interact with the products around them. Simple, yet highly functional mobile integrations will determine who thrives in this space.
About the Author: Nick Swenson is a founding partner of Swenson He, a boutique software engineering firm specializing in the Internet of Things as well as other emerging technologies and platforms. Prior to founding the firm, he received his Bachelor of Science from MIT and advised on the multi-billion dollar sale of a Fortune 500 tech company as a consultant at Bain and Company. Nick can be reached at [email protected] and via Twitter at @nicholasswenson.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
