5 Things to know when designing for the Internet of Things (IOT)

July 16, 2018

Customers don’t buy the IOT. Customers buy a solution to a specific problem where Internet of Things (IoT) objects are part of that solution. In future, our everyday lives will be more filled with connected objects, intelligent. They will appear in our homes, in our working environments and in the cities we live in as well as travel with us everywhere we go in the form of wearable, smart clothing and things we cannot imagine right now. This revolution is called the internet of things, IoT.

IoT continues to gain tremendous momentum, and even more organizational interest, to the tune of multi-million dollar investments. Companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Accenture, and more organizations focusing on IOT, in order to contribute many are saying IOT is the next big technological revolution.

HOUSEHOLDS ARE MORE CONNECTED

The average India household retains a minimum of seven connected, frequently utilized devices, while mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets make up nearly 40% of home internet use.

Most Internet Streaming in India utilizing video streaming services as youtube, netflix as well as app & games download etc..

THE IOT IMPACT ON BUSINESS

Just as our homes are getting smarter, our workplaces will be more connected too. The industrial internet of things making the manufacturing process more productive with machine-to-machine communication. Companies will find marketing and inventory management easier, while consumers will be able to shop more efficiently and have their products sooner.

IOT is the next big technological revolution

5 Key things to keep in mind while designing for the internet of Things are explained below :

FIND SPECIFIC PROBLEM TO SOLVE

While there’s value in being a platform company, it’s important to have a specific use case that a customer can understand and purchase today. For example : Medicines, food items are sensitive items are always stored at the proper temperature and logs are maintained for compliance. So like that we need to find specific problems before designing IOT, which is required today for customers, this is the very important part to design Internet of Things (IOT).
Like that vendors are created many items like baby alarm, when baby cries the device near baby will send notification to parent, saying baby activities are going on, baby is awake.

LEVERAGE WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW

As IoT continues to grow faster, we’ll encounter never seen devices with associated UI’s. For those who design to these new environments, we’ll need to strike the right balance between new and familiar UIs.

As we create the UIs of the future, we’ll need to call those things that have become standard expectations among users. By evolving from what is already known, the potential of new technologies can be harnessed while maintaining enough familiarity to be usable by the user.

CONSIDER THE CONTEXT

Context allows for experiences to be meaningful and valuable. In the real world context lots of unexpected things can happen and at the same time user should be able to feel safe and in control.

DATA RESPONSIBILITY

IoT solutions easily generate tons of data. However, the idea is not to hold as much data as possible, but instead to identify the data points that are needed to make the solution functional and useful.

Understanding what data is available and how it can be used to help the user is a key element in designing successful IoT services.

CONNECT PEOPLE

All above are important but we must never lose sight of the fact that we are connecting people, not products.

The experiences need to open up interactions, connecting us all to one another in meaningful ways will allow for more interaction and, hopefully, more productivity. Tremendous advancements in the field of IoT. The next step is for us to allow for user interactions that are predictable and useful.