How Did A Thermostat Force Us To Invest In CX?

Do you remember when the Nest Thermostat was released?

I know it’s strange, but I’ll always remember hearing about this well designed “smart” thermostat in October of 2011. This was seemingly the first time that someone spent the love and attention on both the hardware and software experience at this level for a consumer home product. I thought two things in particular…

1. I never thought that I would look at a thermostat and think “I have to have that!”
2. This changes everything

Let alone what it means for the future of homes, this is a major turning point in consumer expectations around acceptable user experiences. It used to be that you could compete on features and price alone. An experience may not be the best, but customers will accept something less than perfect if it checks the box on features and price.

But after seeing what is possible with mobile phones and now a higher standard for home products, consumer sentiment has shifted and if you’re not investing in your experience, you’re going to get left behind.

minimum-viable-product (MVP) Sadly, there is a problem with common agile outcomes that if not accounted for can sabotage the quality of your experience. This isn’t necessarily a problem with the process, but with our human nature. When scoping and designing for a minimum-viable-product (MVP) release, your product and design teams may have planned for a wonderful experience. But when the deadline sneaks up on you, the first thing to hit the cutting room floor are the little things that add up to a quality experience. Taken individually, it’s difficult to measure how something like a subtle animation can be as critical as shipping a feature — but collectively it can be a death by a thousand paper cuts.

At AgileThought, we’ve learned our lessons and have retooled our MVP processes to ensure that what you ship is a lovable experience. This is foundational — we separate our MVP track from our experience track and dedicate an interaction/motion designer and a front-end developer whose specific priorities are to ensure that the experience is of the highest quality. This team might only need to have a partial allocation to the experience track, but it is their top priority.

Not giving your customer experience the level of attention that it deserves puts your product at risk of being scrutinized by your users at a level that didn’t exist ten years ago. The bar for what is a high-quality experience has been raised exponentially. If users don’t think you can beat the experience of their thermostat, they’re going to lose trust in your ability to meet their needs. We can help to ensure that your customer experience allows you to stay relevant with the lofty expectations of an ever-evolving consumer market.