IFTTT App Exploration
In 2014, as the IoT (Internet of Things) space took the web by storm, I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the IFTTT service on its web and Android apps, identified where to improve the experience using flows, and designed improvements to the apps.
IFTTT had achieved a reasonable degree of success with early adopters of their IoT service and had just received another set of funding. I looked at the first-time and ongoing experiences of using IFTTT with the following questions in mind:
How do we maintain the simplicity of the service while allowing for complex connections between things at the same time?
Where can IFTTT go as it shifts its focus from early adopters to the next stage?
Is the ‘recipe’ an appropriate metaphor for connecting things in the IoT space?
Skills
Heuristic evaluation, user flows, interaction design, wireframing
Process
I covered first-time and ongoing IFTTT user experiences in a task-based heuristic evaluation. From the heuristic issues came a set of recommendations and potential needs. I mapped out the user flow and identified areas to target for improvement. From there, I created wireframes exploring some design concepts that would take IFTTT to the next stage of product development.
Discoveries
I uncovered over 100 heuristic issues from the heuristic review, ranging from lack of appropriate feedback from a user's action, to latent but important needs not being met. Among the problem areas I identified as requiring additional work, and which I tackled in our exploratory designs, were:
Recipe Creation: Recipes can only be created from scratch each time, requiring memorization and effort, even though users may want to create a recipe similar to an existing one, or create a recipe that works for a variety of different locations, devices, or search queries. For example, users may need to create a single recipe that alerts them if any number of items gets posted for sale on Craigslist.
Recipe Complexity: Users may need to have several things happen at once when a condition is met, or for one action to take place only when multiple conditions have been met.
Profile: IFTTT can easily take advantage of what they know about the user to build up their profile around the devices they use, the locations they care about, and the social media they frequent, to suggest channels to activate and recipes to use. IFTTT can also use this information to learn about the user and target them with relevant recipes by grouping them into predefined personas.
Channels: Channel activation was weakly connected to the profile, browsable recipes, and the process whereby users create recipes. By suggesting channels based on the user’s profile and tightly integrating channel recommendations and activation into other parts of the flow, IFTTT can be put to work more smoothly.
Technical Expertise: While the technical aspects of editing a recipe may not be an issue for the typical early adopter, IFTTT may want to look into hiding the code in the backend so that other personas are not intimidated out of using the service.
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