Designing for Internet of Things? Things to keep in mind

The work of designers and developers are growing as ever. Its scope is getting wider day by day. Designing, building applications or websites sat in retreat, now it’s time to think about integration of things with digital ecosystem that have become a vital part of user’s lives.

Internet of Things has further widened the scope. Responsible for forming interfaces of physical products, we may end up designing surfaces, control and shapes. Designing user interfaces which may be able to control complicated parts of hardware such as to fly up in the air, cook food or housecleaning.

Following are some of the few aspects of products and services which are part of user interface that forms the user experience:

• How exactly the users get to know about the interfaces and how they learn more about it? How exactly the users get to know about the interfaces and how they learn more about it? Through advertising? If yes, then which method- online? Offline or a combination? Or through social media, or word of mouth through real life networks?
  Real life instances include a combination of these things, so what are these blends and how are they formed and gets modified over time. What are the main situations where the users decide to invest in the interfaces? Questions regarding where the users go to learn more, what do they identify in your products and services, how it helps them form a decision and finally what are their expectations that gets carried across when once they start using the product.

• The medium through the users gets the interface and how they pay for it. Think about the mix of application stores, brick and mortar shops, online ordering apps and partnership or referrals. There are many payment models from which the users can choose involving one off purchasing, subscriptions, licensing, renewals and premiums. Understanding what these payment modes mean to the users as well as to the clients is important from business point of view. Also observe the user experience using these channels. Some aspects we can control and some we can’t.

 

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•  The experience of installing and getting started with interface. Take into consideration the packaging, documentation, instructions, on boarding and delivery dependencies and requirements for instance requirement of a Smartphone, etc., integration with ecosystems or other applications. Apart from these, other elements to be taken into consideration are installation and significance on designing of integrated things into user’s environment like home, office, car, etc.

• How users can get the help and support will include channels which are within our control (e-mails, phone lines, social media or chat with representatives) and also those which we do not have control on, or little control like third party forums, friends, peers, etc. sometimes we have to give users the support and other times we have to take support from them. Users can choose a mix of channels either by choice or because they don’t have other option.

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• Security, friendly experience and well-being of users are based on the designs of the interface. Errors and problems are to be dealt seriously. The designers should understand what might go wrong and how the interface reports, alerts and recover from these errors.

• How to update interface? We are used to update the applications and operating systems. Similarly, web applications and websites transforms as they gets upgraded. If there is software into the interface which has safety issue, how the users are going to learn regarding the issue? And what if there is no such thing through which we can initiate and monitor an update.

 

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• What kind of data our interface is collecting and what happens to that data? Consumers have become more alert when it comes to data collection and safety issues raised by it. They become more alert as the interface keeps on collecting store, share, process and publish such kind of data. The designers should be involved in designing the data collected, defining and carving out its collection scope, storage in order to maintain balance between comfortable users and clients and communicating clearly to each one involved. 

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http://surevin.com/blog/designing-internet-things-things-keep-mind/