7 User Experience Challenges in Designing the Internet of Things

The core principles of user-centred design are universal and can be generalised to most forms of technologies that we interact with. With the exponential growth in the development of technology and their increasing accessibility, their involvement and integration in a user’s life and hence the user’s behaviour around them is consistently evolving. This means that with every new technology we design for, we have to revisit our design strategies, as what might work really well for one format may sometimes break the experience for another.

Internet of Things is one of those technologies the design for which is not as mature as it is for say websites or mobile apps. A blend of digital and physical, if not done properly, the interactions could create cognitive loads that steal away the potential offerings of these systems and rip them to their core physical functionality that is merely switching a bulb on or off remotely using a mobile app.

Here are a few UX challenges I have encountered while working with IoT projects and some of the potential solutions to these challenges.

There is no industry standard yet for IoT connectivity protocol, the most popular means of connectivity communication being Bluetooth, Wifi and NFC. Some devices also popularly use the camera to scan a QR code or a barcode to identify the device. Because all these different devices out there don’t have a standardised connectivity user flow, they have to take the users through a walkthrough to get their devices connected.

While Bluetooth seems like a good choice because most users are familiar with the process of connecting their Bluetooth headsets or speakers with their devices, there are a few inconveniences of latency, single user connectivity and the restriction to identify and acknowledge the connection manually. The range is also limited and the device has to be paired every time the connection is established.

The most streamlined flows I have experienced so far is where the devices use a passive communication to identify each other and pair without putting the user through the process while still keeping them aware of what’s happening.

The connectivity conundrums lead to monitoring nightmares in the world of IoT. One of the most crucial principles of user-centred design is to keep the user updated on the status of the system. A connected device that uses Bluetooth as a mode of communication is the most vulnerable to sharing the wrong status of the system as there is no easy way to communicate the information. Showing the wrong system status may sometimes confuse the user and mislead them to try changing the status or setting up the connection again with the system. However, Bluetooth mesh network shows some potential to solve this problem.

The choice of technology used in an IoT system is highly contextual and depends on the use case of the device. While some are supposed to work when in direct contact, others may require to be used from thousands of miles away. Low fidelity short range solutions like NFC or QR scanning work really well and are scalable and cost-effective, but when a longer range is required, it is better to seek a cloud-based IoT infrastructure. The real problems come when the system that is designed while expecting a short-range starts breaking when the operational distances increase. We have all experienced our Bluetooth audio stream breaking when we step out of the room. Unexpected interruption has never been a good experience and it never will be.

The golden advantage of connected appliances is that they practically never get old (unless the hardware tech does) and can potentially be updated to the latest firmware development. This means that any bugs in the firmware can be fixed, new features could be implemented, or paid features could be unlocked upon buying a subscription, and all that can be done remotely. Users are not very habitual of such pleasantries and a bad experience to do it could spoil all the fun. While the updates could deliver satisfactory value to the users in the beginning, a new update every other week would only bug (pun intended) them. Also its always great to let your users know what advantage they are getting with a new update.

A key requirement in IoT ecosystems is that they are made interoperable so that any appliance could function in any ecosystem, and all ecosystems would seamlessly adapt, connect and operate with any device from other ecosystems. This, of course, is a user-centred approach and compromises ecosystems from upselling or cross-selling their own devices. Due to this blurred boundaries across ecosystems, users also expect similar behaviours across all the products and services that they pay for. Although it is difficult to control what patterns are being designed by other developers until there are no coherent guidelines, it is a good idea to evolve preexisting behaviours into the IoT world to give interoperability its best chance.

Semantics and communication otherwise as a whole take a very crucial role in experiencing IoT systems. When the nature of the devices a user interacts with changes, it also changes the relationship between the user and these systems. Now that more of these systems are getting integrated into the lives of the users, they have a potential to distract the users and become a hindrance to their goals, while they should take more of an assistive nature for the users. To make these devices adaptable, it is essential that they are made very intuitive, and they function and operate as expected by the user.

As a user sends a command to the IoT device from the controller, the information has to follow a path, predominantly via a Bluetooth connection. This results in the delay in that action coming into effect, which causes a latency in time. And so is with Bluetooth connections that the appliance does not provide a feedback via the connection of its new status. The challenge here is to pass this information to the user, avoiding any cognitive load, that the action takes a certain time to come into effect and giving the command again would result in causing another undesired change of status.

It is indisputable that the number of connected products in our environment is going to increase and we are getting more dependent on them and also getting used to them being integrated into our daily lives. Our nature of interaction with new technology is ever evolving where it can take different shapes, sometimes being so apparent and other times being invisible. As developers of these technologies, we can shape their behaviour and fulfil the expectations we have from them.

I am a UX designer having worked four years in Mumbai, India. Currently I am a grad student of Integrated Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University.

I am ever excited about new technology and its impact on humans and their integration and adaptability into our lives.

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