Trends in UX Design: The IoT Perspective

User experience (UX) design is one of the main focal points when designing any product. It’s about offering ease of use, accessibility, and reliability to your consumers so they can effortlessly interact with digital solutions. 

Internet of Things is a rapidly evolving technology taking the world by a storm.

It promises to improve, simplify, and double productivity thereby, allowing humans to automate daily functions using smart devices. But, these modern solutions go through regular updates and modifications to improve performance and user experience.

The booming success of smart products like the Echo, Amazon Alexa, SmartMat, etc. have enticed IoT companies to advance their efforts in UX design to ensure good user experience. UX design is what bridges the gap between humans and technology, which means it won’t be going away anytime soon. Here is a list of emerging UX trends that IoT specialists will find beneficial when updating or developing new products. 

Educating stakeholders is critical

Even though the aim of evolving modern technologies is to offer an enhanced user experience, there still seem to be individuals who don’t understand the underlying significance of UX design. All enterprises must brief their teams on the many concepts of user experience and how it impacts the success of your products. It’s a simple equation – the more efforts spent on refining the user design, the better the user experience. 

Gather your troops and sell the value of UX in product design so they’re informed about its benefits. Designers can make their practices more transparent and describe the various stages involved in creating the final solution. 

Voice is the new touch

Voice-activated features are currently leading in the race of in-demand interface functionalities. Smartphone users can send text messages through voice commands, shop online, or place an order at their favorite restaurant. There’s so much hype around voice activation that some fear it might be ready to replace touch technology.

Developers claim that to ensure the best user experience, touch and voice both must be incorporated in the design.

Relying solely on voice is not suitable to offer the extent of comfort designers are striving for. Therefore, to offer an enhanced user experience, design experts and organizations are aiming for a balanced union of both features. Consumers then have the freedom to switch between the two options depending on the situation and ease of use. 

As long as businesses and UX designers keep track of user preferences, they can work together to warrant usable and reliable products. 

Context of use is growing in importance

IoT devices come in a wide range of forms and each offers differing input and output capabilities. In simple terms, most IoT specialty devices have an intended purpose and work under a set of conditions. During the design phase of these smart solutions, they are created with a unique context of use which differs from that of a mobile app or software; because it is developed for an existing operating system that simplifies the context of user queries. For instance, if you are designing a website using Magento web development services, whether you wish to view it on an Android smartphone or a MacBook it will work perfectly since it is targeted for an existing platform. 

Context of use encompasses all issues and questions that arise regarding a potential or existing product such as who are the users, where is it applicable, when, what are the steps involved, etc.

So, when you are designing a product with a unique context, it will require a deeper analysis of the barriers and usability issues that are involved.

Working on IoT applications requires more dedication to the context of use as it will result in a better and smarter end-product. 

Multi-device experiences are the new normal

When we talk about IoT, we focus more than anything on the functionalities of the device. But the behavior of the device can often be managed on a network that acts as a cloud. This is also essential in delivering a finer user experience to consumers. People appreciate the feature to manage a system via multiple devices to carry out a task from a faraway location. The integration of connected devices in IoT systems allows users to change or reset settings at any time of the day, from anywhere. 

Design systems are gaining new fans

As we go deeper into the discussion of rising UX trends, design systems are also a great addition to the list. They are quickly becoming a popular collaboration platform for developers.

It offers guidelines, patterns, and components to designers to facilitate their work and align teams around a shared goal.

Similarly, it exhibits design principles that aid teams to make useful decisions while designing the product. The collaboration of these elements helps to create and deliver a consistent experience. 

UX designers are actively thinking about AI

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are predicted to dominate the digital world in 2020. Automation has majorly benefited enterprises and individuals across the globe in different industries by increasing the consistency of output, minimizing human error and labor costs, and reducing customer waiting time.

This has led designers to contemplate the advantages of integrating AI in their design to improve user experience.

Industrial IoT applications are already a top-use case for AI technology;

from material tracking and logistics management to outlier detection and equipment maintenance. It’s time for designing teams to get innovative and come up with ways to implement AI in their products to boost user satisfaction. 

Ethics is essential

Good user experience is greatly reliant on security. The ongoing data breaches, scams, and wrong use of information have instilled a constant fear in consumers. Designers are required to overcome this challenge and create products that are safeguarded from hackers and online offenses. The Center of Human-Technology insists that designers focus on highlighting ethics in user design, specifically dark web patterns.

This is important since there has been a rising number of cases where the deceptive use of design causes consumers to take unintended actions. As a result, design experts are expected to research ways on how dark patterns can be permanently defeated in the future.    

Wrapping up

Humans are striving day and night to bring comfort and ease into their lives. Constant updates and developments are being made in user designs to improve product performance and adaptability as we encounter new challenges. Once designers start practicing user-centered design approaches they will witness the adoption of IoT applications on a larger scale. IoT holds the potential to transform industries and make remarkable changes; bringing a higher level of ease into our lifestyle. 

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