For designers and developers in the IoT sector, it’s an exciting time. With the limited introduction of 5G to the UK in 2019 and an upward trend in interconnected products and services.
The age of IoT is most definitely dawning. Indeed, the sector has current projections of around 5 billion new IoT devices by 2025, something not to be sniffed at by future investors. However, while your product or IoT infrastructure may be a stunning example of the power of this new technology, does the app that goes with it offer the same level of polish? Having a working IoT service is only half the battle, especially when aspects such as security, reliability and user experience are such essential components. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look as to why you need to invest in a quality app for your product.
With our increased interconnectivity comes new avenues for security breaches, something that few in the app industry have fully come to terms with within the IoT sector. According to a recent study carried out by security house Keyfactor, a huge number of encryption keys that are essential to preventing unwanted access to systems were either too weak or had been duplicated, which put them at substantial risk to hacking.
Of the 75 million RSA certificates gathered by Keyfactor, they deduced that one of the main culprits was IoT technology. Due to the fact that embedded software was usually too low-powered to create truly random number encryptions, IoT devices are most at threat from cyber attacks.
IoT designers for appliances are especially at risk. While smart fridges, intelligent controls and WiFi toasters may offer great benefits, without proper protection, cyber criminals will focus their efforts on these weak links in the system.
Designing a quality user experience for a new app is a tricky endeavour; doing so for an IoT system that may span a whole business presents a whole mountain of difficulties for the unprepared. Because of this, UX is sometimes put on the backburner behind other features such as data collection. However, in doing so, the resulting apps can be difficult to navigate, lacking personalisation and can even exacerbate reliability issues. Aside from being extremely irritating, this can lead to a significant drop in productivity.
While the above points are two of the most egregious sins we’ve noticed on some IoT devices and services, the above is by no means an exhaustive list. Because of this, it really does pay to work with a specialist in the app design industry.
By outsourcing your app design requirements to a team with skills and experience in the IoT sector, you are much more likely to receive a finished product that is equally as polished as your own.
We will keep you up to date with all the latest in mobile and web app development
MyOxygen