Why the product was redesigned for a problem

Two days ago, a friend asked me, your health scale is really shanzhai competition products it? My response: The world, the nuances of the similarities. When you think you are the first one to do something new, somewhere in the other corner of the Earth, someone else has made your idea come true. In fact, we in 2013 the end of August the first generation of prototype can start testing, and later because of a problem, the original design of the product pushed to the beginning, only to this day, the product has not officially to the market.

At that time, our company's visual designers asked a question: Why do we have to get the phone every time we test? This question is really asking me, I can't explain to this colleague our equipment is the human body impedance detection, detection of human impedance values to be combined with the measured weight data and the user's height, Gender and age to produce other data. Originally I also think that in the Man-machine interaction has the breakthrough and the innovation, the equipment usually is in the low power standby state, when the person stands up activates the equipment, the Bluetooth pushes the data to the handset app end, the user chooses the user in the handset side natural, the corresponding user data completes the numerical calculation. This is more natural than our first program user stands on the device, but also the app side to the user Selection page to select the user and then excite a signal to the device more naturally, the result seems to be the real user's pain point is not here.

We did a small market research before making the product, and one of the projects was to investigate whether the user would mind taking the cell phone to test, and nearly half didn't mind, and even 42.18% of the people thought it was more intuitive. I began to think that some places are wrong, think of the previous marketing when the predecessors when talking about market research said: Most of the research is a trap, in the user has not experienced the scene, they will imagine the situation then give a tendency to judge. If you really want to know the user's habits, give up asking questions and learn to watch! So originally ready to turn to pilot production link to stop the project, I want to improve the product experience in the life scene, through the observation of the actual use of the state to determine what we think of the user needs and the actual difference is how much.

We hand over the equipment to the employees who are not involved in the project development and thinking, let them record the entire usage process, and also let them buy a traditional health scale on Taobao. See what the difference between the two is, what satisfaction and dissatisfaction they have.

After 2 weeks, I had an in-depth communication with each employee involved in the experience:

All employees like to see the data immediately, in the process is best not to mix what interference, such as looking for mobile phones, click on the app, select Users. If you still need a Bluetooth pairing, it's even more to get a new pair. (We used the Bluetooth dual-mode chip to consider a large number of Android users, and then we made a decision to make the final user experience better, Change to Bluetooth 4.0 single mode chip, I think 2014 years high-end Android phone will also support Bluetooth 4.0, in front of the user experience, we must give up the experience of poor choice, it is best to stand up to see the data directly, especially to every morning and night measurement, standing next to the scale and then go to find the phone where, Most people will give up the process.

Traditional equipment also to set up the user on the device, each use also in the device to select the user number is a more annoying thing, the principle of the same time or do not users I trouble, they want to know the number of each time.

Data to the mobile phone can not be kept confidential, some female employees do not want to let family and even husbands know their weight, they think it is a very private thing, do not open the app, switch users own data is at a glance.

Some employees mention that the device is most convenient to use in the bathroom, the equipment can not waterproof, in addition can be made just and the size of the floor tiles, so that the equipment can be square neatly (this should be the character of the constellation of obsessive-compulsive disorder), if you want to carry to carry on the back to design a buckle hand will be more convenient.

Few people are willing to share their real data, unless they are particularly perfect and self-confident people, and most people feel that they still lack a little bit, so the microblogging sharing, friends circle sharing directly throw out the data is too ridiculous, who will share it.

Well, forget the pit Dad's investigation, the investigation will always help you out of good products. Think about when the iphone just came on the market, when mobile phone user demand survey shows: battery durability and the body's ability to fall off is the user most value the two needs of mobile phones. As a result, Apple, which is not in the ascendant, has spent 6 years subverting Nokia, which has a market capitalisation of 250 billion dollars and a perfectly mobile phone, has been forced to sell to Microsoft at 7.6 billion dollars. So the user experience is the highest, we add the screen removed from the device, although we eagerly hope that users only use mobile phone to collect data, only use mobile phone to view data, all the data are in the cloud, the more data in the future, the higher the value of the company, But there was a voice that reminded us that if a user buys back a device for one months, it's a few extra steps to use. You're never going to get away with a hardware device.

Then we gave up the design of the all-inclusive, and in the domestic and future sales abroad will be a different version, domestic bathroom tiles are 300*300 specifications, in order to let the users of obsessive-compulsive disorder fall in love with us, we have the domestic version of the size of the design adjustment for this specification, 44 feet on top also not out of the edge, and placed in the bathroom card tiles placed no Shong sense, after all, the Chinese family in the large bathroom is very few, Qianxiu little woman standing on the health scale will not feel too big.

A lot of friends see here will ask, is not more than a screen? As for the long delay?

As for! Because we have restructured the hardware and app process. We want to solve the problem of not letting most users pass the health scale every time they want to measure not to find a mobile phone this demand brings a series of problems, even in the middle there is a period of time we want to give up, let users pass the time of the first reflex is to find a mobile phone is not dead; Most of the products on the market are not perfect, the company's delay in the introduction of products per month is also a huge cost; Here's a list of some of the main issues we've come across:

The device to store the user data within the home, so that users do not use mobile phones to transmit user data to the device, to make the device can be intelligent judge who is on the call, and the corresponding user information;

Guests came home, if he used the app to put his information on the device, whether it can be deleted, otherwise there will always be guests curious and family data can not be stored on the device how to do?

If there are two people in the family who are very close to height, weight, age and gender, what about the twins?

There is no need to carry a mobile phone when testing, but the data is always on the device, but there is no big difference between the complexity of the traditional device user settings. Data collection does not analyze, can not provide personalized services to the business model conversion.

If you use a mobile phone to transfer data from a device, how do you transfer your data only, instead of collecting the data of all the users on the device into the same phone account?

If a device has multiple users, and one of the users has more than one device, how do you summarize and synchronize data? and let different devices know who you are?

If a user is in a stage of continuous weight change (such as during pregnancy), how can the device intelligently determine who the user is?

If the device is used in public, is there a different requirement for the use of the home scene?

Is it the first page to test the page in the mobile app? Do we want users to look at devices as detection tools or as health management tools? Do users need data or do we have reasonable plans and arrangements after analyzing the data?

If users are sensitive to weight data, can we change the way we want them to be secretive and show off?

Said so much, this is our painful process of thinking, it is a hard decision to give up a product that has already been done, and it is the end of last month that we were able to find a way to solve all of the above problems, and now the hardware and app are in great shape and hopefully our change attempts will be successful. I believe that if our products can solve the user's experience barriers, competitors will do similar experience improvement in the future, we would never go to the public irony and ridicule competitor imitation, but rather believe that they have the ability to find their own unique solution.

However, some of our methods have started to apply for a patent, then if you want to improve the user experience, the device on the screen at the same time, please be sure to bypass our patent application.