App in need of serious redesign - Yes or No?

After using the Wyze with the new products added, some usability is becoming a problem. The problems for me is the lack of readable of the text because of the poor choice of size, boldness, color, and contrast. This is increased to being 100% “unreadable” if outside in the light. Forget being pretty and use black on white or at least don’t use pale green text on white. And the font size is completely silly. Not everyone has 18 year old eyes.

Small spacing problems are also starting to show up in places like the Scale page of the app - instead of being able to see all of the page, you have to move down one line to see the “Heart rate” toggle. Just reduce the huge blank area in the middle of the page to provide space for everything.

I wish that the app more usable and less stylish. Please forget being “Pretty” or “Cute” make a version that is actually a utility not a statement.

Am I alone is my dislike of the “Look & Feel” of the existing app?

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Yes, we all agree the app needs a dark mode.

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You are not alone. People have been asking Wyze to make the app more “accessible” since it’s inception.
Once in a while I see release notes saying they have improved the UI Home or something to that effect. Never any details. I haven’t actually seen much other than a few icons becoming more visible.

We’re blind and Wyze is deaf. Bad combo. :slight_smile:

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Its funny how people heap such praise on Wyze being a “customer” company but it seems very few customer request ever get addressed.

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I don’t believe that Wyze is sinister in any way but they would be smart to give us a bit more info.
They do try to stay in communication with their customers or at least make it appear like they do. That being said they seldom directly answer tech related questions.
I would like to know if there are technical hurdles to implementing Dark Mode or at least making the app readable.

They do seem to have a priority issue at times.

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The company as a whole seems to be a bit like a child that becomes overly fascinated with a shiny new toy but forgets to keep the sparkle on the older play things. And if it is a lot of trouble, they just never take a broken toy out of the toy-box.
Sorry for the bad analogy, couldn’t resist .

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Growing pains and perhaps a lack of understanding their customers priorities

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Just reading through the Beta forum I see where Wyze employees have trouble getting answers from the software developers. If they have that much trouble communicating internally it’s not difficult to see why we don’t get answers.

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You’ve made two very good points and you’ve made them very well. Very well stated on both

ABSOLUTELY AGREE !! Why all the fancy colors for background for the band? Make several solid darks. lso, WHY am I given the choice to see battery % when it is in such a tiny pica as to be unreadable, not to mention some pale blue color. And while we are at it, why not fix the obvious problem - heart rate on main screen. I am a geezer, walking to get heart rate up. No way to see heart rate unless I stop, fiddle with a ouple of screens and then wait until heart rate shows up. And then like others have said, make the phone screen colors READABLE! Good grief. Who thinks a kinda dark orange text on top of a kinda light orange background (and the other colors as well) is easy to read. Just stop being cute and make the Wyze Band usable. I have relegated my new Wyze band to the top of my chest. It will never be worn again unless these things are fixed. And I cannot recommend this “right priced” product because of the “wrong usability”

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Plain and simple - no usability studies or interviewing / soliciting feedback from true end users BEFORE starting on product implementation.

My guess is the developers decided what the User Interface should look like. It’s very expensive (and difficult) for a software company to make changes after the GA release.

The last few “beta app” releases have stated, “improved UI” … but I don’t see it … “improved UI” means something was added, or they changed from displaying “70%” for Wifi signal quality to “using bars” which is meaningless opinion - what does two bars signify?

I could go on, but won’t : )

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YES YES YES! to redesign YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

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My biggest complaint about the app is the shortcuts, why no widgets for shortcuts? What’s the point of having to open the app to tap the shortcut when I could just create a group and tap that. It’s one of the most useless things I’ve seen in a mobile app!

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I totally agree that white font on pastel colors is difficult to read inside and extremely difficult to read outside in bright light. Hulu does the same silly thing.

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You make an important point. Although apps need to make a branding statement, usability is still key! Small text with little contrast is your enemy. Especially given the size of smart phones today. Know your user demographics. More use of icons or indicators instead of words is an option. Get more functionally creative over visual style.

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The APP really is poor. Something I’d like to see is the sleep stats being more specific. The Band seems to break down sleep into deep, light, and awake hour by hour (but you can’t see it because the screen is so tiny)… on the app, that data is stacked, so you don’t know for example when (what time) you had deep sleep and when you had light sleep. For me, it seems that data could be broken down into more useful detail. Same with heart rate - high low for the day - OK, but what times of the day???

That aside, having an online portal app (similar to Fitbit), would be really nice.

All in all, it’s fine if all you want is steps and time of day. The other functions could be much better.

I give the APP a major FAIL.

That’s a good analogy. They don’t seem to realize that people who are not pleased with the app are rejecting some of the newer hardware that they’re offering. Without a dark mode on the app and yes scalable type would be great, I am not inclined to buy a scale or a lock or anything else that’s going to be as frustrating to use as my cameras … #darkmode

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I concur, readability is an issue

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My my opinion, Wyze would greatly benefit by having user focus groups concentrated with participants groups that are very different from the age and educational achievements from the internal application designers and review teams to gain a better understanding for these low priced products purchasers.

Example: Facilities serving different population segments are designed, painted, and signed very differently to achieve favorable useable outcomes.

The number one rule of business marketing is never design something that appeals to yourself, but instead create something, campaign, product and service for your targeted audiences, so it will create a huge demand and ultimately happy customers.

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