Project description

Pybytes is a dashboard designed for managing Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Initially, it supported displaying a single provisioned device at a time, offering limited data parameters such as geo-location, network type, and personalized settings.

My goal as a Product designer was to enable users to provision and monitor a fleet of IoT devices with a single click, while also allowing customization of the data collected for each fleet.

Research activities

Hearistic Evaluation
Competitors analysis
Web-analytics analysis
Usability Testing
CSAT quick on-site survey
A/B testing

Deliverables

Customer personas
Hi-fidelity prototype
Customized design system
Demo-videos

Duration

3 years

Research

1st research question

Who are the users of Pybytes, and what are their specific needs?

To identify key user groups that highlight weaknesses and uncover opportunities, the following research methods were employed:

Heuristic Evaluation

The audit of the portal accorting to NN group 10 Usability Heuristic.

Usability Testing (UT)

With 5+1 participants we performed a task based UT measuring User Effort (time-on-task), User Success (number of complete tasks) and User Satisfaction UX Metrics.

CSAT

25 users partisipated in the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) short questionnaire that was embeded on the pages of Pybytes together with the followup question about possible improvements.

UX questionnaire

Around 20 users participated in the User Experience qualitative questionnaire, that was spread around the Pycom Forum users. This questionnaire intended to define user groups and their ambitions regarding IoT devices.

Competitors analysis

We reviewed the most successful IoT companies that provide not only out of box devices but also the electrical design toolkits and device management platforms: Particle, Bolt, Arduino, Azure.

Since the majority of Pybytes users are tech enthusiasts exploring the potential applications of Pycom IoT, the research revealed that most challenges were related to the customisation of the Pybytes environment, where the urgent questions for a user are:

How can I provision multiple devices with one click?
What MicroPython code should I use to track ambient data?
Can I view all relevant metrics for my Pycom sensors in one place?

Problem statement

"HMW provide a customizable user dashboard for managing and maintaining multiple IoT devices?

"HMW simplify the setup of a new project for users across different industries?"

Solution

Defining the Requirements

What do real-world applications require? In which scenarios can Pycom devices be used? How can we provide a flexible, general-purpose tool that helps users build their own dashboards?

To maximize usability across different use cases, I proposed developing a widget-based interface where provisioned sensors are grouped into projects. To help users set up their own projects easily, we introduced case-based project templates tailored to specific industries:

Smart Home
Fleet Management
Robotics
Smart Wearables for Health

By selecting a project template, users receive:

A preset of relevant metrics visualized via widgets on the Pybytes dashboard
Ready-to-use MicroPython code snippets for their sensors
Access to the corresponding community on the Pycom Forum

This approach empowers users to seamlessly configure their IoT solutions while fostering collaboration within the Pycom community.