The Wemo app was lacking guiding principles that we could use as a basis for decision-making and to improve the experience in our app. I spear-headed this effort by working with the team to identify principles that were unique to Wemo, and that would help us move forward to improve the Wemo business.
The principles we arrived at were the following (see in detail further below):
Be clear and concise, focusing on what matters to our users
Offer things quickly and easily
Provide system feedback
Be helpful
Build trust
Be clear and concise, focusing on what matters to our users
Guide users along the golden path with actions they understand. Only ask questions that are relevant and that users are prepared to answer. Distill a process down to what's most important.
Offer things quickly and easily
Present the user with what they need, and remove any unnecessary steps along the way (those that we can take care of without requiring action from the user). Removing those steps decreases the chance for user error and poor review
Provide system feedback
Inform/excite the user when things work well. If something did not go as planned, we should tell them and provide guidance of how to resolve the problem
Be helpful
Provide guidance to help users along the golden path.
If an error occurs do not scare or blame the user! Kindly provide them with instructions to help them move on.
Build trust
Stay modern, current and up to date. If we appear old or have outdated style, users will have trouble associating us as a smart home, tech app.
Things should work as the user expects
Present a unified style to the user <<we’re having trouble with this at the moment as we’re uncovering how to successfully fill both UX and UI roles/expectations
