App in need of serious redesign - Yes or No?

Hmmm I seem to remember rubbing sticks together

In the days when ā€œrubbing things togetherā€ was a mite simplerā€¦

In this wonderful digital age of communicating capability I question why is it that the innovative company known as Wyze is still using 2 soup cans and a long string to communicate with their customer base?

Whatā€™s your preferred platform and why?

Mahalo 'e rbruceporter, angus.black, Big_monkey, and peepeep you men are awesome!

After graduating college, I worked with VP Yoshi Yoda, you might remember him as ā€œFujiā€ from Mc Haleā€™s Navy while working for Toyota Hawaii.

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Thank you for making me smile this morning.

I have to apologizes as so many donā€™t think about how the human bodyā€™s needs change as all of us get older, especially our eyes after the age of 40.

A decade or so ago, I understood the phrase ā€œyouth is wasted on the youngā€.

Thank you so much for sharing your age in this forum, I hope the staff at Wyze will read that many of its customers have growing needs unlike their own each year we get older and take action and learn more about the ā€œaging human eye.ā€

Aloha 'e

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My family are a part of the ā€˜Appleā€™ ecosystem. Used to do IT work for MSDOS systems but got tired of the BSD that managed to appear all too often

I donā€™t have a ā€˜systemā€™ preference, I just happen to believe that open communication and prompt replies are the key to successful growth

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Thanks for the Kudos, my eyes and ears both suffer the ravages of ageā€¦ I often ponder what system will go next. However, my observation of almost all printed text could use with some readability improvementā€¦ As far as hearing goes I send blessings to the individual that invented the ā€˜offā€™ switch

I donā€™t know, masterep, the oldest ā€œteam memberā€ at Wyze is like 22. Co-founder @UserCustomerGwen is still in college, I think.

Empathy for The Olds may be something they have to gin up on company retreats. Better than nothing, I guess, but stillā€¦ :wink:

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27, actually. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

And I think Iā€™m probably obligated to state that Iā€™m not a co-founder though I have been with Wyze since before the launch of Wyze Cam v1. :grin:

Anyway, I sent this conversation over to the Design Team so that everyoneā€™s voice can be heard. Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

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Mahalo and Aloha 'e to you WyzeGwendolyn

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ā€œGive me landscape mode (for my iPad), or give me death.ā€

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Hi gang! Iā€™m a product designer at Wyze. Thanks for making this post- Iā€™ve asked Gwen to blow my Slack up with any and all accessibility-related posts they find anywhere. I can help shed some light on where weā€™re at with our accessibility efforts.

How our app got to where it is today is probably a discussion for another time. Wyze took on millions of users and had to build the app faster than it could scale- and without a design team that could plan and strategize a direction for our app. Wyze leaned heavily on partners. The good news is we now have a design team. Nothing new will ever leave our studio that is not highly accessible.

So the problem to solve now is how to deal with the current beast. For the next 2.11 or 2.12 release, I redesigned a lot of core components- like the header, so it not only meets WCAG contrast ratios, but will be rated AAA. I also pushed out a 100% new Events feed which will be ready around the same time. For our 2.10+ release, I sneaked in a tweak to the footer text, but Iā€™m hoping we can give it a full redesign soon. Iā€™m redesigning Rules and Shortcuts as of today, but no ETA on that yet.

I believe that is a large chunk of areas in our app that fail basic accessibility. Are there any other specific items that are difficult to see that I could tackle?

@angus.black @The_Tango @Big_monkey @jarussell @myswtest @jerryjam @bradgonemad @colquhouncb @joenapoleon @lsintampa

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True, app-wide landscape mode for tablets, in my case an iPad Pro, is still missing. Due to a physical disability, itā€™s very difficult for me to rotate the iPad 90Ā°, just to read the main screen and menus, every time I launch the app. Iā€™ve posted repeatedly about this over the past two years. Would very much appreciate this being fast-tracked, as Iā€™m sure those with a keyboard attached to their tablet would. Thanks for the update, by the way.

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I will be curious if this thread goes the way all the other ā€œproblemā€ 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 ā€œmuted and subduedā€ 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 ā€œvaguenessā€ 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 deletionā€¦ A real pain if you have a bunch of camerasā€¦ 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 ā€œon and offā€ 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 Wyzeā€™s app development.

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