I used to be a contractor for Airbus through my then company. As one of the principal engineer and “director” of the development program, I helped creating customized version of a Product Lifecycle Management software used to manage all the data used during the definition of the A380, A350 and A400M plus some legacy planes (A330/340…). Never worked with Boeing despite being in Seattle! 
And you are most likely talking about the Episode 2 Wyze Podcast. Thank you listening!
There is no difference between the Cam V2 and the Pan but the extra costs, the bigger size and the limitations that the Pan is currently showing makes me say that I like the Cam V2 way more. I see the value of the Pan and when it would work better.
I don’t see how they’ll be able to continue rapidly expanding features without forcing people to adapt to a changing interface (or forego updates, which has its own drawbacks.)
We won’t and we are thinking about that. The approach to UX was one thing when we had one product: 1 camera. When you launch the camera, we know what you want to do: use the camera. But when you have not one but many cameras, sensors, bulbs and plugs then it becomes very difficult to know why you are coming in the app. There is also people like me: with many cameras in their house. (about 15 including in & out of the house). The amount of video produced per day is beyond what can be reviewed by watching the videos.
We also have something different coming. While the devices that we have brought to market so far are dedicated to the home, there are two devices that are personal in nature. The mobile phone and the upcoming scale.
This means that we have to change how we are approaching the app and what it means to use the app. The challenge is that for the customers that have one camera, or a couple of bulbs, we should not have a very complicated UX, the simplicity that we had when we launched the app should still be there BUT the UX should allow to take on the complexity of customers with a very large set of the devices (in quantity and diversity).
So what are we doing? First, we realize that the original team was stretched beyond limit. So we more than triple the number of designers that are working on creating your Wyze experience. We also are rethinking the app from the bottom up. We started 6 months ago but hit an impasse. So we double down and are hard at work in creating the next version of it and we are starting to get some pretty interesting lessons.
One is that to unlock and contextualize the devices, we will need to augment the quantity of organizing concepts.
For example, we are looking at the notion of Home because for some automation we need to know if the user is home or close to home and what are the devices that are at that location.
Another lesson is that being device centric makes some of the UX difficult because you might jump from one device to the next when trying to do something. For example, a doorbell, a contact sensor and a lock might be working in tandem when someone is at the door.
So we are looking at all those challenges and trying to create the best UX possible.
I give it a 4 in intuitiveness. I believe the app can use some work. Unfortunately, I think they will just keep cramming stuff into hidden nooks while they bring new products to market. Too much hidden in drop downs and behind other gadgets. I understand they are dealing with limited screen space. I just think it can be utilized better. The low contrast between controls and the backgrounds also hurts the app.
No we won’t. We have to do it for the moment and trying to minimize the impact for the moment as we are working towards a better experience but this is not something that can happen overnight. So please patience!
…instead of continuing to expand on a base interface that may be growing awkward with many additions and enhancements, would API programmers ever say, “Dam the torpedoes!” and do a complete remake - effectively starting from scratch?
Exactly what we are doing. Well not completely from scratch but we are starting from a blank piece of papers.
the best thing wyze could do is to create as many API hooks ( perhaps JSON commands or similar ) as possible so that the creative community can rearrange the UI as desired … that would be “wyze”.
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so many great things about WYZE PRODUCTS … sadly , i must say the user interface for the ipad app is poor. the organization makes little sense to me. i so wish that there was an API or config file to make life easier… both for configuring the system and for documenting the setup. BOO HOO
Actually, I would disagree. One of the mission of Wyze is to make the technology accessible. So we have to make a solution that works for a large amount of people. Creating web hooks and advanced configuration limits the number of people that would be able to handle it.
What I would agree with is that we need to have ways to offer advanced configuration/customization. As the person in charge of the integration technologies, I’m interested in creating in time (ie. don’t expect anything before 2021 at the VERY least!), an entire Developer API. For the moment, our cloud has been designed with no possibility to open the API to a developer community. The results would be very dangerous for the overall ecosystem.