Who will be using your IoT Solution?

When planning and developing IoT products and solutions it is easy to forget who all the users will be. Instead of creating a list of all users and stake holders, it is easy to focus on a single user type and use case when in fact IoT will change many aspects of a business and will be used by many different persons within a company. So how do you capture this?

The simple answer is to create User Profiles for all intended (and unintended) users of the IoT solution, profiles that capture:

• Name and Title
• Responsibilities
• ‘Wishes’ from IIoT
• Application Type and Function
• ‘Needs’ from Application(s)
• ‘Likes’ from Application(s)
• ‘Wishes’ from Applications(s)
• Initial Impressions from (alpha) Application(s)
• Satisfaction and Usage Tracking

Here is a User Profile example from a company using IoT for Site Operational Monitoring:

Joe – Site Operations Monitoring Manager

Responsibilities: Make sure that Site Operations on 16 different sites are functioning normally and tracking/reporting any anomalies in performance data or operational conditions escalating any issues.

‘Wishes’ from IIoT: Provide better real time monitoring data and information with ability to quickly look at historical performance plus compare sites operational conditions. Early notifications on issues and alarms allowing for quick response time. Ability to quickly summarize anomalies incorporating critical data in escalation tickets.

Application Type and Function: Web based Applications for Data/Event Monitoring and Analysis/Analytics. Tablet Application providing quick summary of every site in easy to select menu. Mobile messaging application providing quick anomaly reporting.

Needs from Application(s): Easy to use interface that provides constant status of each site with ability to quickly click on any site to pull up a page of important and critical information. Customizable thresholds to flag important information. Machine learning of normal operational information and flagging on any anomalies.

Likes from Application(s): Ability to customize Interfaces and add new information over time. Provide relevant information in mobile notifications filtering out nonsense.

Wishes from Application(s): Make my job easier to do by adjusting to new operating conditions automatically without having to program every minute change.

Initial Impressions from (alpha) Application(s): Show an experienced User the initial version of the application to get feedback and ideas for improvements.

Satisfaction and Usage Tracking: How will you measure success. Put a process in place.

There will likely be many more User Profiles for any given IoT Application, anything from Installers and Service Managers to Administrators and Back-Office Analytics. By identifying these up front, your IoT Solutions and Implementations will be vastly improved. Creating User Profiles is not difficult. All it takes is to bring the people who will use your IoT applications into individual or joint meeting and fill in the form of what they want to get from the IoT solution.

At Triotos we believe User Profiles are critical for great IoT Solutions and we work with our customers to jointly develop these. Our simulation tools allow us to create sample applications at the beginning of a project instead of waiting until the end to find that the intended users are unhappy with the results. Visit us on www.triotos.com to find out more about our approach.