One Thing I Love: August Smart Lock
The August Smart Lock allows me to control entry into my home by opening the application and with the press of one button, I can lock or unlock my front door. I can allow others access to my home remotely as well. The first thing I love about my August Smart Lock is the feedback it gives me via my iphone application. I am notified if the front door is locked/unlocked automatically or manually. I can check to make sure the front door is locked, giving me peace of mind when I’m away from home. The second component of the August Smart Lock I love is the design. Because of the shape of the lock, affordances are successfully employed such that there isn’t much room for confusion on how to manually unlock the door. Additionally, the design of the application is similarly designed, with the touch of one round circle in the middle of the page, controlling the lock and unlock features.
One Thing I Dislike Strongly: Climate Control Unit
My climate control unit was not designed with the basic principles of interaction design in mind. This unit is meant to control the heating and cooling system for my home (and on hot Southern California days, you know this is a critical system for my sanity) but it is extremely difficult to navigate and not intuitive. The first design principle this unit lacks is feedback. When pushing the buttons, the user rarely receives clear feedback on what has happened, making it confusing to know if you’ve actually done what you intended to do. Secondly, the unit lacks clear mapping, both physical and semantic. There are a number of buttons on the unit, with the majority of them lacking proper labeling or placement on the unit. Lastly, affordances were not successful employed in the design of the unit, therefore, making it very difficult for the user to know how to activate the unit. The only clues the unit has is the plus and minus buttons to increase or decrease temperature, as well as the on and off buttons. I remain confused as to how to set a schedule or use any of the other buttons on the unit.