What’s different about UX for the internet of things?

ThingsCon 2015 Claire Rowland - @clurr Image: Disney Movie Year

Hello :)

- Independent UX and product consultant

- Lead author: “Designing Connected Products: UX design for the consumer internet of things” (due May 2015)

My grandfather could probably have told you how many electric motors he owned. There was one in the car, one in the fridge, one in his drill and so on.

My father, when I was a child, might have struggled to list all the motors he owned (how many, exactly, are in a car?) but could have told you how many devices were in the house that had a chip in.

Today, I have no idea how many devices I own with a chip, but I could tell you how many have a network connection. And I doubt my children will know that, in their turn.

Benedict Evans http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/5/26/the-internet-of-things

Visions of IoT often look like this

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/heck-internet-things-dont-yet/

…but the reality can be more like this

‘It’s a bit glitchy but it’s OK, you just have to be in the room at the same time’. Actual review of a connected home system

It’s not just UI and industrial design

Facets of IoT UX

Image: Nissim Farim

We don’t (yet) expect Things to behave like the Internet The average consumer is going to find it very strange when objects take time to respond, or lose instructions.

3 part diagram:

Value proposition

Conceptual model

Interaction model

What does it do? How does it work? How do I use it?

Image: Instructables Image: How It Works Daily

Value propositions:

Solve a tangible problem

Mass market products should

- Solve a real problem people have (value)

- Offer a good solution (desirable, usable)

- Come at a cost (financial, effort) that feels in proportion to the value

Product Tool

In areas where they don’t have expert knowledge or are short on time

consumers need products, not tools

Nest do productisation really well

Belkin’s mobile app is good, but

a connected socket is a tool that requires users to solve their own problems

This is a product

Conceptual model:

Connected products are more complex to understand

Conceptual models used to be simple

Connectedness requires users to think about system models Which bit does what? Where does code run? What fails/still works if connectivity is lost?

You can explain the system model...

BERG Cloud bridge: transparent network comms

Or you can make the conceptual model simpler

Users will get more familiar with connected products… but not for a while

Using it:

Interusability: coherent UX across the system

Cross-Platform Service User Experience: A Field Study and an Initial Framework. Minna Wäljas, Katarina Segerståhl, Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen MobileHCI'10

Functionality should be distributed to suit the context of use

AKA composition

Consistency Create device-appropriate interfaces that feel like a family

Continuity Dealing with latency, reliability and intermittent connections

BERG Cloudwash prototype

service UX

…has my action been executed or is it still in progress?

Has it worked? Why/why not? How will I know if it fails?

…the right solution depends on context

…intermittency can also cause discontinuities devices that are out of sync can give different status information

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Designing for interconnected devices:

Handling complexity

A simple platform for a few devices is one thing...

• but this is a world of single apps, single devices, single hub

But we want things to work togethervideo by Ericsson

Ericsson

Technical interoperability is a huge issue

But getting things to work together in common sense ways is also crucial

Add to: lighting controls?

security system?

both?

alarm video

lighting heating

temp.schedule

security

Relationships quickly get complicated…

…and then some

alarm videotemp.schedule

schedule

security

controls

lighting baby appliancessafety

energy

smoke medicine

controls

heating

notificationsservices

controls

devices presence

contacts

user needs

The UX platform challenge:

creating the logic that drives sensible interrelationships

A final thought

Good consumer UX for IoT is surprisingly hard

Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity:

As you make the user interaction simpler you make things more complicated for the designer or engineer Larry Tesler, former VP of Apple

Thank you@clurr claire@clairerowland.com