![]() ![]()
That was great ten years ago, but users expect more now. One of the strengths of HomeSeer has been its install-and-go functionality. HomeSeer, I’M BEGGING YOU to focus on improving the user experience in this next release, employing the skills necessary to design and build your new web and mobile user interfaces. HomeSeer’s HSTouch interfaces for iPhone and iPad seem to be HomeSeer’s premier offerings now, and while they’re more visually engaging than the legacy product, they’re still a bit clunky: the design is heavy, and they seemingly ignore many iOS UI design standards and best practices. HomeSeer is obviously making strides in usability, but there’s still room for improvement. ![]() Homeseer hometroller mini upgrade#The upgrade for the installed version of HomeSeer isn’t expected to be available until the end of the year. ![]() If you want HomeSeer 3.0 running on your own server, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer. The device will also support mobile touch clients (which, today, requires the paid HSTouch add-on), and it should carry a price of just $299. Homeseer hometroller mini serial#It will require no additional server hardware, it will include HomeSeer 3.0 on-board, and you can connect your third-party control interface via a serial connection. The device is similar in concept to Universal Devices’ ISY boxes, but it will use a bring-your-own-control-interface approach, so it can support any protocol. We should see an embedded version of 3.0 in a standalone module by this Summer. That doesn’t engender significant confidence, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see it. HomeSeer claims the new UI will be similar in concept to iGoogle’s configurable portal pages to allow for more user customization. It adopts a new technology platform (again), and it will offer a new AJAX UI and a robust API. There’s good news: HomeSeer 3.0 is in the works. HomeSeer (the company) was one of the vendors at the Z-Wave Alliance booth this year at CES, so I had an opportunity to speak with them about their product roadmap. And if the INSTEON add-on is any indication, that weakness plagues the application extensions, too. Device and event configuration seems focused more around data collection than user workflow. Workflow is a key element, and that’s another area where HomeSeer’s web interface suffers. User experience is about more than design, though. Over the years, many of HomeSeer’s paid add-ons have further reinforced my UI design concerns, including a (now years old) plug-in for touch screens that made me cringe, thinking, “are you kidding? HIRE A TRAINED GRAPHIC DESIGNER!” Data-driven Workflow I’d guess that the graphic design work was done by developers repurposing freely available web images and playing around in Photoshop (or an open-source alternative). With all of its power and flexibility, HomeSeer’s UI has been rough around the edges from the start, sporting a (lack of) design sense that suggested the team simply didn’t include a trained user interface designer. It’s bad-bad enough that I’ve been flirting with switching to other systems like Embedded Automation’s mControl or Perceptive Automation’s Indigo. Roughly five years later, it still sports the same, stale interface-now looking very Web 0.9. In fact, with the decided elimination of support for a desktop client in the 2.0 product, HomeSeer took a step backward in usability, forcing all users to move to a largely-unchanged web client. Homeseer hometroller mini software#As a do-it-yourself home automation hobbyist, I’ve been using HomeSeer home control software for almost ten years, and in that time the user interface has changed very little. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |