Designing Connected Products: UX for the Consumer Internet of Things

Great Foundational Text on General IoT – Focus on Timeless Concepts Over Technology
Update: Seven years later now using this as a course text for an undergraduate program. IOT changes rapidly and this book is about core fundamentals around “experience and meaning” that will always be timeless – how do you design experiences over how to program an embedded controller that will be end of lifed at some point. We could do with an updated version but still now it’s at a much more reasonable price point and the information is valid.Existing review:Every IoT professional or entrepreneur needs a copy of this on their desktop. I am one and I swear by it as a source of learning and as an inspiring reference when formulating new product propositions.I originally bought a copy of this electronically from OReilly. I subsequently loved the book so much I paid for a paper copy to sit on my desk with the other IoT references I use. ( Kindle is great but not really “browseable” as paper is. Sorry poor tree.)IoT is at a very nascent stage and useful IoT products even more so. Customer value propositions for IoT products are not clear yet and excitingly represent a new frontier of great big opportunity. We are with IoT where the web was in 1994 and where the Personal Computer was in 1979. It’s really cool tech and we know it will be really useful soon but there is a lot of painful learning to be done and a lot of grammar’s on use and UX to be written, before we create the killer app’s that will make IoT products “must have’s”. That;s why you need this book as one of your guides.What a book like this does is bring the best of what has been deeply thought about by some of the best professionals working on IoT services each day – Claire Rowland and Elizabeth Goodman whose previous work I have followed in papers and conference talks. In Elizabeth Goodman’s case her partners book – Smart Things by Mike Kuniavsky – was one of the first and still a landmark book on IoT / Smart devices. These professionals have been kind and diligent enough to document their learning and discoveries to create a “cookbook” of good IoT ideas and axioms.If you work in the field on the product or service implementation side – I strongly suggest you get a copy of this book to catalyze your own thinking, in this fast growing and frankly exhilarating field. It’s not a tech book, it’s a design book. It will inspire new ideas and save you a boat load of time.

Everything fine
As described

An extremely useful primer on UX design for IoT
When you venture into user experience design for tangible products you suddenly find yourself feeling horribly alone. The failure rate for IoT startups is scarily high: around 90% according to some reports. Few people understand how to ensure their product meets real user needs. Very few deeply understand both software and hardware design. Then there are networking problems and a Pandora’s box of privacy and security issues, as well as all the unknown unknowns. Where in software design there are a ton of resources to turn to, this is uncharted territory.The authors of this book are pretty much as expert as you can get in design for connected products and they’ve created a very thorough primer here. I’d go as far as to say it’s a complete lifesaver. As well as UX design it deals with the research phase and product strategy, and briefs you on hardware design and networking pitfalls. I found loads of pointers that would never have occurred to me but which make absolute sense.Although it’s a pretty hefty book it’s not a heavy read since it’s well structured and the writing is clear and collegial. You can dip in where you need, using it as a handbook as you work. You get the feeling you have an expert friend by your side to whom you can turn to for advice. That’s very comforting.

Inspiring, accessible and comprehensive overview of UX design for the Internet of Things
Loved this book. It really clarified a complex subject for me and I’m continually finding it useful in my work.It’s got loads of visual, real-world examples to show the ideas and concepts in practice.Very engaging, clearly written and most of all extremely practical for design professionals looking to keep the user at the centre of the Internet of Things.

As a User Experience consultant who works in the IoT / connected products field, this book could have been written specifically for me. The significance of this book, in contrast to many books on design, is that it does not simply offer design patterns but instead explains in detail the structures and characteristics of these technologies framed within the expectations and abilities of the user in context. As the number of connected products grows, the methodologies described here will become more useful to anybody working in this area from designers to product managers concerned about security. It’s a complex eco-system and this book makes it less complicated.

I heartily enjoyed reading this book, since writers seem to have working experience in this field as well as the will to cover the subject from every possible aspect. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about design challenges of IOT products but also design of distributed systems in general.