Having spent most of my work in software before having an opportunity to work with hardware, I think it’s hard for software folks to fully appreciate all the different engineering challenges that go into connected hardware. So it completely makes sense that UX analytics gets little attention and doesn’t get done well, if at all. Kudos for articulating the problem so well and for juggling all this :)
Look forward to getting you the analytics you need to optimize the user experience!
Yes, there's a difference between what people say that they do and that they will actually do. Similarly, when people are given instructions to test a product, they behave very differently from what real users do. After listening to or reading instructions, users will usually carefully read everything that’s in an app. In real life they just click. That’s why it’s so important to use interaction data :)
Glad you found the demo helpful! Would love for you to try out the dashboard and get your thoughts on the experience.
You bring up an excellent point about multi-device apps. When companies launch additional devices, the app is usually an afterthought at best. If there's any new features that go with the new hardware, those features get the most prominent location in the app (usually on the home screen). It doesn't matter whether they're actually things that users frequently want to use. There's so much room for usability optimization in these apps.
Really appreciate you picking up on the simplicity of the dashboard. Usability is core to our product (both to help connected products to be usable and to do it with a usable analytics product). We definitely have lots of work ahead before we get there. But it's an exciting challenge :)
Thank you! We’ll definitely look into Smart Friends.
We do want to support industrial and commercial use cases eventually, but they’re further out on our roadmap. The dashboard right now is optimized for the consumer use case. It would need some adjustments for industrial use cases, e.g. good visual representation of interactions with a large number of devices.
Had a quick look at what you’re building. Looks awesome! Looks like you don’t have an interface for the elderly individuals, so completely appreciate that usability of an app that connects hardware is not your greatest pain point.
This is only for the app side (or display if the hardware has one) because our solution is focused on making the interface user friendly. But there are other solutions for troubleshooting connectivity and related issues. Feel free to ping me at [email protected] and I can put you in touch with folks who work on that.
Thanks Jared! I hope so too. Many IoT teams are still shipping software as if it’s hardware: they develop it once, ship it, and move on to planning the next product. This is particularly true at companies that traditionally made non-connected hardware. Having access to analytics will hopefully make them pay attention to where people struggle with the existing software and improve it.
Thanks! That’s a good point. General purpose analytics tools can’t cover specific needs because that will blow up their product and make it even more difficult to navigate. That’s true when using them in other specific industries as well.
While the IoT industry is pretty broad – home appliances, wearables, scooters, etc. – the fact that there’s physical hardware involved means the apps are used in similar ways: connect the device, control the device, read data from the device, etc. In that context, pre-configured charts and industry benchmarks work really well.
Look forward to getting you the analytics you need to optimize the user experience!