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How much freedom a smart oven user needs. How a strong team can test hypotheses in two weeks instead of three



We have been developing interfaces for remote control of smart technology for a long time. This is very responsible: a smart home is what a person faces daily, so we always think about how to make the life of users even easier.

We are very attentive to our product: testing the capabilities of the equipment and the interface, we bake real pizza in a real device. It has been proved that using the application is more convenient than the cabinet interface, which has technical limitations on hardware and banal physical space.

We will tell you about one of the cases in controlling the oven. Oven SkyOven RO-5707S - universal mini-oven with remote control technology through the Ready for Sky app. She has 20 cooking programs from baking, muffins, baked meat and fish dishes to stewed soups and omelettes. And there is also an auto-heating function for 12 hours.

Smart Oven RO-5707.

In this oven, dishes are obtained the first time. If something went wrong - there is a line of chefs who can answer any question and give advice on cooking.

The user does not even need to search for the recipe on their own and think about how to adapt it to the oven - there is already a built-in recipe book with 200 dishes. The oven itself reads the temperature and cooking time from the recipe, so the user only needs to press "Start".

This is very convenient if you are new to cooking and do not know what temperature is better for meat, fish and so on. But there are also experienced users who might like to set the cooking time and temperature on their own. Because they have a lot of experience or have a secret recipe, for example.


How the interface of the RO-5707 oven looks like now.

The customer set us the task - to give all users of the application the opportunity to edit the cooking time and temperature on their own.
We took up the task and realized that there are no analogues of such technology and interfaces. We had only one example - this was the existing interface that we implemented and which people used.

From the technical side, we had no restrictions, so we quickly dealt with the implementation of the new function: now the user could select a recipe, prepare products, choose the oven settings independently and get a dish.


Customer as experiencedand advanced user, delighted with the advanced functionality. He wanted to quickly roll out a new update at all, but opinions on the team were divided. We were worried that not everyone can get the result as good as with automatic settings.

Example: you do not need to know all the functionality of Lightroom in order to post photos on Instagram. There you can only change the emphasis on the photo or hold out some color settings.

Our application has all the features of Lightroom, but a user who does not want to take a steam bath can apply a preset and lay out a photo instead of manually pulling light and shadow. In our contexthe can make an excellent dinner, even if he does not know anything about the cooking temperature and the ratio of products: the recipe is calculated, the program is checked.


The idea of ​​the customer was that all users are experienced , so the possibility of manual configuration should be easily accessible and displayed somewhere "on top". We had to convince him that there were enough newcomers among our audience and such a decision could lead to endless calls to those. support.

It was necessary to conduct UX testing, interviews with users and a survey in the application :

  • Do you cook at home?
  • Do you use food / prepared meals / grocery delivery services?
  • Cook the same or enjoy experimenting with recipes?
  • Prepare clearly according to the recipe or change something at your discretion?

We wanted to set aside three months for the collection of arguments , but they gave us two weeks . The survey would be ideal, but its implementation required the resources of developers, which could be involved very soon.

It turns out that we could not get a qualitative result in the usual way, but we had colleagues. They are wonderful because they had knowledge of technology and the audience and were ready to make contact and share the facts.

Our project manager identified colleagues who are associated with our project, requested from them all the accumulated over six (!) Yearsinformation and pulled out of this what the team needed. This was a series of meetings with related departments. We gathered the necessary arguments and received a lot of new ideas from colleagues who support their product.

At the same time, the developers were involved in the process and fully supported the idea of ​​collecting information from colleagues and helped us to do this correctly and efficiently.

We started the study by turning to technical support . We talked with them, plunged into the context of the user and identified what we needed. It turned out that users make mistakes because they do not understand at what temperature and how much to cook meat, fish or vegetables.

One possible solution is to implementtips for users. They are needed when one product changes to another in a recipe. Cooking programs should change, but this does not happen automatically. The user relies on their own experience or related recipe.

We wanted to create a calculator that calculates the time and temperature of cooking, depending on changes in the recipe . We went to consult with the cooks. They said they also want such a calculator, but making it is very difficult . If one ingredient changes, then the whole logic of cooking changes, because the ingredients affect each other in different ways. It is also necessary to take into account the region of origin of the product and its other features.

To make such a calculator in two weeks, we certainly would not have succeeded. Therefore, we began to look for another solution .

And yet, do most users need the ability to edit automatically specified parameters at their discretion?


We turned to the third group of experts - to marketers . They replied that such an oven was bought mainly by inexperienced users, students .


It was clear that manual control was only necessary for experienced users . After analyzing the information, the customer agreed that it was worth delaying access to it by one step . Now the task was to make this step obvious enough so that both groups of users understand that they are leaving autopilot mode for independent control.

We decided to solve this problem using the notification, but how to make this notice noticeable? Not so that the user sees the pop-up window out of the corner of his eye and out of habit clicks “OK”. We need to explain to him what is happening. We prepared three options and tested which one is clearer.

In the first two options, users out of habit clicked on the button without thinking or reading. Only the third option worked as we wanted: a pop-up scared the user who changed the settings unknowingly, but experienced users calmly clicked “continue” because they intentionally changed the temperature.


So, we changed the initial task - the introduction of the possibility of manual control for all users - and conditionally divided usersinto two categories. We saved automatic settings for newcomers and activated the ability to change cooking programs for experienced users. And, most importantly, they made the process of transition between the two modes more visible and conscious.

The market requires speed, so we did not have the right amount of time to collect the agrumentation for a really good interface. We found a way out, but it is the merit of people who have been collecting data and user experience for many years. Because it is important for a designer, cook, engineer, customer to help a person, even if he does not know how to bake well and give complete freedom, if he is already a real maestro.

Advice to colleagues:be inventive even when it seems like there is nothing. You can talk with colleagues, maybe there is an elegant way to do even better. We are lucky because we are open to any questions and there is a lot of useful information about users - come and work with it. Or come to work with us.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

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