ThingMonk 2016: Claire Rowland – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In this talk UX strategist and lead author of Designing connected Products – UX for the consumer internet of things. http://www.designingconnectedproducts.com/
Claire Rowland reveals the kind of things that can and do go wrong with connected products from the mundane to the ridiculous. Giving examples of how this failure is sometimes embedded from the design stage such as in cases of inappropriate latency in device response. She offers some pragmatic strategies for mitigating these failures at source.
Particularly concerned with how these failures affect consumer experience Claire also recommends improving the baseline experience for the user when things do go wrong. Whether that be in simply designing things so that failure activates default failsafe modes, error reports are informative and loss of connectivity is planned for.
Going beyond the technical aspects of bringing connected products to the market Claire highlights business responsibilities not only from the perspective of safety and security but also the need for transparency. Inoperability glitches can arise when a variety of platforms and providers are providing the consumer experience and this should be accounted for.
Day 1 talks have revealed some genuine risks associated with the proliferation and ubiquity of IoT devices on a sliding scale of potential severity so it was refreshing to hear the conversation turn towards ESCROW agreements and other practical strategies for commercial responsibility being taken seriously for the lifetime of a product, not just a of a company.