App in need of serious redesign - Yes or No?

I will be curious if this thread goes the way all the other “problem” threads go. We complain, whine, make suggestions, respond to each other and never get any meaningful reply from Wyze except "we are looking into it. After a while the thread dies - exactly what Wyze wants to happen. Nothing really changes.

My first PC was when MS-Dos was it & I was the only person in the company curious enough to learn the system. And yes the years of looking at monitors have taken their toll. Wyze should remember the history of Lotus. I will get to see the mighty fall again.

Start a different thread - now is the perfect time.

Agree on a redesign (never liked the light green hue).
But this goes far beyond Wyze and many other companies.
Microsoft started this trend with “muted and subdued” colors with Win 10 and many apps that rides on top of it (think Office 365 as an example). Those of use who are old enough to have used Windows and Office apps when fields were well defined and contrast noticeable, are missing it in these days when “vagueness” seems to drive UX design.
The smaller the screen, the more important it is that fields and boxes are clearly defined and visible. Wyze is no exception. And screen real estate could be better used as well (like adding a consistent home button).

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Nice to hear from you Austin,

In the events tab, often times I get over 100 video clips thus requiring me to scroll down numerous times to load them all for deletion… A real pain if you have a bunch of cameras… Is there any shortcut to this issue??

I will suggest the entire app developing team learn more about the aging eye of people after the age of forty as well as those with stigmatism and/or born with poor or weaken contrast separation.

https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/patternbook/techniques/agingeye.asp

Besides vision and hearing, finger dexterity also degenerates especially those with pre-diabetes and diabetes conditions for all ages. As an example the placement of the “on and off” button for the Wyze cameras is super prone to encourage accidental engagements.

I wish the university system still taught bio mechanical and ergonomics efficiencies today, which used to at the core of process engineering disciplines for industrial process, which it appears would greatly help Wyze’s app development.

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@milehiguy Specifically for a tablet, I will look into what that would require technically. I know a phone landscape mode would be very difficult for the same reasons that a dark mode would be difficult- the app was built very quickly without any components. So an update would require a 100% redevelopment.

But it might be possible for us to make a mode that would add margins to the side during a landscape mode. I will inquire about this.

We had planned a 3.0 app and would probably be well on our way through it by now if the virus didn’t hit. So the 3.0 rebuild was pushed to 2021 while we secure our planned Series B funding. Very possible it would simply be an alternative though, rather than a replacement, similar to SmartThings. In the meantime, the existing app will see some massive changes.

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I’m sorry you feel that way. Your frustration is understandable. The difference this time is everything in my first reply above is designing and in development :slight_smile:

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Please, please, please bifurcate The single Wyze app into a home and a health, two independent applications.

Or please show an example of how the new Wyze scale would be a dependent and integrated component of all of the other Wyze devices.

I for one would not like to upgrade my application to use the Wyze scale and jeopardize Stability and usability of all of my other Wyze products. As my 2 1/2 years of experience with Wyze has shown, it is very likely an update for one product will disrupt the operation and usability of another product by many ways within the Single app.

Thanks for the article! I will share with the product team.

For some background, I came from Microsoft, where accessibility was practically a religion. Products were blocked from shipping if they were not accessible- no matter cost. They spent a remarkable amount of resources training us up through workshops and talking with differently-abled users.

Our home page is pretty terrible- it’s more of a device list. I’m hoping to move us away from the idea of “devices” and move toward “capabilities” that surface controls and insights. I will keep your input in mind when designing it and make sure it is done the right way this time.

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I appreciate you coming to the forum with a real response to this.
You seem to be going in a direction that would cover my problems with the app. Tiny fonts and very little contrast.
We have been told that implementing Dark Mode is much more difficult than it would normally be but no real detail as to why.
A few of us are developers for other platforms and would understand an explanation.
I don’t like the idea of one app for all Wyze products. Cameras, sensors,don’t fit well with scales and bands.

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I wasn’t aware of this issue regarding event deletion- I made a note on my desk and will attempt to replicate the issue when our developers are finished with their initial redevelopment and have the pattern fixed. Thanks for pointing this out!

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Couple of problems. With design, the US design team is me, two others, and a manager. We need to triple in size. Then we will have the ability to create a design system from what exists. Then, we can create the design system we need. And then it can be applied to the app.

With development, we don’t have a component library and there isn’t a structure to the app. A lot of things are built custom. There is no single source of truth that a theme is generated from. It is a big bowl of spaghetti, due to our early remarkably quick growth. With many apps a designer can say “Okay, these existing grayscale colors can switch over to this. And we can use a few special rules like using lighter grays to represent higher elevation. Done.” The problem is that we don’t have that existing theme file to convert. So every view would have to be redesigned. This would take about 6 months to get out into the world, we would celebrate, and then we would be faced with a doubled workload thereafter due to creating a light and dark mode for each screen. This is why we need a design system to pull from.

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Thats for sharing, It might be time to have an internal priority discussion.

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The very bottom of the home page is nearly invisible. The time code is too small in the normal portrait mode. It is better in the horizontal mode but the white text might be better if it were red or blue. IMHO.

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Austin, I sense that this is the direction you would like to go in. Do you have the blessings of Wyze to do this and one must assume that it would be a side project along with your normal responsibilities?. Usually in programming, as I understand it, modularity is typically the path taken in development as some of the routines and sub-routines can be called at different times for reuse. I assume that is the approach you wish that had been used rather than the hodgepodge method used to rush an application To market in support of a product that outgrew expectations…

When Battery % is on, I know it is on the screen but it is so tiny as to be useless, even with a magnifying glass. Same color text on same color background on the phone app - get a color blind person to review your work, that blue on blue, orange on orange is is next to impossible to see well. Tiny grey text on white background is very difficult read also. And when you get around to it, PLEASE put the heart rate on the main screen with steps. Actually heart rate is more important to me WHEN I AM EXERCISING that the number of steps. That is how I set my pace to be not so hard yet not so easy. A 74 yo has to get the heart rate right (as does anyone else who exercises) . I can always look at my step progress AFTER I am finished but fumbling around over several screens to get to heart rate is a no go for me…that is why the Wyze Band ihas been relegated to my chest top rather than my wrist.

Jim Russell

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Ok, I understand. The app was built in pieces as needed.

I believe Wyze is facing a common issue with early development commonly called “design debt”. It’s common in startups and even large established shops.

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Thanks for the reply @AustinByr. Like most others, I use my iPad in landscape mode 95% of the time and keep it locked in that orientation. As you can imagine, below is what I see when I launch the app. In addition to being oriented incorrectly, there’s a ton of unused screen real estate. All other screens/menus, etc. are similarly sideways. Thanks again for agreeing to look into this. As someone who worked in IT design/programming for decades prior to retirement, I do appreciate the scope of the task ahead of you. :wink:

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But that doesn’t indicate modular in design… Only added to as needed to function