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Project Overview

I have always been a demanding user. I prefer apps that meet my expectations and I especially love apps that impress me with their features and design. When it comes to my own designs, I strive to exceed expectations and realize their full potential with high performance.

As a former developer, I understand the challenges of getting feedback from users and how valuable it can be. This is why I try to give feedback every time I see the opportunity. I hope my feedback helps people, UX Designers, Developers and, especially, final users.

Objective

This project aims to bridge the gap between user expectations and app performance by leveraging user feedback to enhance UX design. By systematically collecting and analyzing feedback, providing actionable recommendations, and collaborating closely with app developers, I aim to propose improved, more intuitive, engaging, and satisfying user experiences across a variety of software products.

Next, you will find examples where apps could improve user experience. This is a new section in the portfolio. I will keep adding cases. Stay tuned and feel free to reach out if you need any feedback, proposal or brainstorming session.

Introduction

The Kasa Smart app allows users to remotely control and
manage Kasa smart devices, such as plugs, switches, and cameras,
providing convenience and automation for home settings via smartphone.

The timer feature lets users set schedules for their devices to automatically turn on or off at specified times, enhancing
convenience and energy efficiency.

Analysis

Assuming the team did their job and did some user research and competitor audit, accepting the existing time picker component is a reasonable decision if it meets the usability and functionality requirements of the users.

A miss in this screen is remembering a preferred timer for each device. It is annoying for the user to scroll up and down trying to find the same time every day.

Now, let’s focus on the huge amount of unused space. Mainly in the most reachable part of the screen. There are numerous articles on the internet discussing this topic. Let’s base the analysis on this one from Alex Kirhenstein, “Mobile Reachability. Rules of Thumb” at medium.com. I applied the guidelines from the article to the timer UI. The result of putting the thumb reach area image over the original Kasa Smart layout confirms my theory.

Visual Design

I designed the proposal with consistent use of colors, fonts, and iconography. This uniformity enhances user experience by providing a seamless and intuitive interface, making navigation straightforward and aesthetically pleasing. Ensuring that the new design element aligns with the rest of the components of the app promotes a professional and polished look.

Functionality

I introduced six shortcut buttons to the time picker for quick access to predefined times. I also added a customizable button that remembers the last user-defined time. This feature streamlines scheduling enhances user efficiency, and adapts to individual preferences, making the app more intuitive and personalized for frequent tasks.
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I moved the Turn On/Off button at the bottom of the app. Currently, this is by default set to Off. In my opinion, setting it to the opposite device status would reduce user tabs in the app, improving user experience. It means setting it to off when it is on and vice versa. So, if it is off, the most normal thing would be to turn it on.

Conclusion

The user experience is significantly enhanced by just adding some nice-sized buttons and accommodating the components for better reachability. The screen does not look crowded while maintaining the app’s overall look and feel.

Adding the customizable timer that the app remembers, removes repetitive tasks from the user.

Potential for growth

An opportunity for optimization would be performing some user research or data analysis (over the already existing user data) to improve the values of the predefined values.