Rethinking the IoT for the non-tech savvy
A different take on the LG Smart Diagnosis task flow
This is a concept. I’m not affiliated with LG.
“Connect to 2.4 G. H. Z. Wifi network. What the hell is a G. H. Z.?!?!”
My mother screamed in vain as she realized fixing her refrigerator’s ice machine would involve using technology. Her new LG Smart fridge had been producing less and less ice over the past few days. Interestingly, instead of googling on how to fix the issue she dug through her closet to find the instruction manual that came with the fridge. After realizing how many steps she had to go through to connect to fridge to wifi, she gave up angrily and vowed never to buy a LG product again.
Why did this happen? Are we not living in this fantastic age of the Internet of Things? Advertisements for the LG’s Smart Diagnosis make it seem so easy. Simply hold your phone up to your appliance and it will diagnose your problem instantly. Sounds like magic. Unfortunately there remains the pesky problem of connecting your appliance up to Wifi.
LG makes it look easy! Done in 3 steps.
3 plus 16. Keep in mind for the technologically challenged, catastrophic failure resulting in giving up could occur at any one of these steps.
Take a moment to imagine the situation from the non-tech saavy customer’s perspective. You didn’t grow up with any of this technology and now it’s suddenly in your home. You spent a lot of money on a new fridge and wake up one day to find the ice machine not working. The salesman sold you on the “smart diagnosis” feature but you have no idea how it works. You consult the instructional manual just how you always have for appliances and it tells you to press buttons and download apps. Add account creation and technical jargon such as “Gigahertz” into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for frustration. You just want to get your fridge fixed and you want it fixed now.
I whiteboarded out the problem and tried to identify where in the user flow things went wrong. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure they say. If you wait for something to go wrong before trying to connect your appliance to wifi, you’re going to be entering the situation in a frustrated mental state.
How might we help non tech-savvy appliance owners get their stuff fixed while resulting in minimal frustration?
I believe the answer is in rearranging the task flow of contacting support.
I looked at how electronics manufacturers like Apple do it.
When the user first purchases their new appliances, they can be prompted to register their appliance online in the browser or through the LG ThinQ app. This takes care of account creation and registration before anything goes wrong.
The fridge can then be set to send diagnostics to LG intermittently, connecting to Wifi when it needs to. This step is optional, but I assume that if people don’t mind having Alexas in their homes they would be ok with having LG knowing about their fridge health.
This brings down the problem solving task flow to 4 simple steps.
1. User receives a notification that something may be wrong with their appliance.
2. User taps on notification and can choose to seek help.
3. User can choose to get help by phone or chat.
4. User gets the help they need and their issue is resolved.
Of course, if the user is not experiencing any issues yet they can choose to ignore the message and seek help at a later time if necessary.
Will your design pass the “parents test”?
As product designers we may sometimes feel like a wizard hat donning Mickey Mouse, gleefully hovering over a boiling cauldron as we concoct magical technological solutions for people’s problems. It’s important however to remember that for the non-tech saavy, the technology they already have in front of them seems magical and mysterious enough. Let’s empathize with our users and fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Disagree with my design choices? Great! Let me know what improvements you would do in the comments.
