thermostat to represent the entire system. (It’s far less likely you’d hear
someone saying ‘I use Nest’, ‘I have Nest or ‘I have a Nest system’.) Because
the device is so central to the UX, users will have high expectations of its
design and functionality. The service enables remote access and smarter
functioning, but in the user’s mind it is a way to control the device (Seefigure
4- 18).
4- 18 – example of produdct advert with device front and centre, e.g. Nest?
A security alarm is an example of a system where the service is the focus: we
might call it a device-enabled service. The alarm service is what users care
about. The sensors and other devices are generally low profile and most of the
intelligence sits in the internet service or gateway software. You could add or
swap out devices without affecting the core functions of the service.
Key factors that indicate that the service may be the focus of your user
experience, not the device itself, may be that:
O Interactions are distributed across multiple devices, so no single device is
the center of attention
O Most functionality lives in the cloud service or gateway software (perhaps
because local devices don’t have much computing power); and/or
O Devices can be added, removed or swapped without changing the core
functioning of the system;
As the UX expert Mike Kuniavsky describes it, the device is an avatar for the
service.^11
The Oyster travel card (see figure 4. 19 below) is a stored value contactless
smart card used on London public transport. It can hold various types of
tickets or a credit balance for travel on the underground, trains, buses, trams
and boat services. (‘Stored value’ means that the credit is notionally held on
the card itself, rather than in a separate account, as with a debit card.)
Passengers add tickets or money to the card itself via online purchase, ticket
machines at stations or by setting up regular debits from their bank accounts.
(^11) Mike Kuniavsky, ‘Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design’,
Morgan Kaufmann 2010