IoTapp + hardwareB2C

Qblinks

2.1 stars to 4.3, on a product people had already paid for

Qmote & tracMo — Smart Button + Bluetooth Tracker

Role

First UX Designer

Company

Qblinks — IoT hardware startup, Taiwan (~20 people)

Timeline

Apr 2016 – Sep 2017

Qblinks smart-home ecosystem: WeMo device integration, an Uber map trigger, and the Qmote action list on iOS and Android

2.1 → 0.0

Qmote's App Store rating, in about a month — on a smart remote that had already raised US$219K from 5,999 Kickstarter backers (1,098% of goal).

Joined as Qblinks' first UX designer, working with a five-person dev team

Context

Joined a product people already paid for

In 2016, "smart button" and "Bluetooth tracker" were frontier products. Qblinks had shipped Qmote, a smart remote funded well past its Kickstarter goal — then the reviews came in: 2.1 stars on the App Store. I joined as the company's first UX designer, working with a five-person dev team (iOS, Android, firmware, fullstack, QA) for users in the US, Japan, and Taiwan.

As seen in

Trusted Reviews coverage: "Qmote is a programmable remote control for your smartphone" — Trusted Reviews

Digital Trends coverage: "This tiny remote control will control your smartphone and your smart home" — Digital Trends

Japanese blog coverage of Qmote S, demonstrating the pairing gesture — JP coverage

Japanese blog unboxing coverage of Qmote S — JP coverage

Discovery

Onboarding before redesign: an oversized, unlabeled plus button with no guidance — Before

Onboarding after redesign: a numbered three-step pairing guide with an illustrated press gesture — After

The 2.1-star app

Reviews said Bluetooth pairing kept failing; the engineers said connections were fine. So I took the app to cafés and watched strangers set it up.

Part of the blocker wasn't the radio. The "+ New Device" button was so oversized that nobody read it as a button — users never started pairing, then wrote reviews saying "can't connect."

Craft

Three fronts, one turnaround

I redesigned onboarding and the pairing flow around what I watched people actually do. The iOS and Android engineers hardened Bluetooth pairing for every device model that showed up in complaints. Marketing answered reviews one by one, telling users what we fixed.

2.1 → 0.0

App Store rating, in about a month

Device list before redesign: an ambiguous lightning-bolt icon with a raw device ID — Before

Device list after redesign: recognizable Qmote droplet icons with a clear tap-to-add-action prompt — After

Designing tracMo from zero

In 2017 the company bet on tracMo, the world's first Bluetooth 5 tracker — four years before AirTag. I designed the app from zero to launch: iOS and Android, in three languages, including Community Search, where every user's phone quietly helps find everyone else's lost items.

tracMo app screens and hardware in rose gold, silver, black, and white finishes

0.0

App Store rating

0.0

Google Play rating

0K+

downloads

US, Japan

cross-border on Amazon

Designing before the playbook existed

None of this had an established UX pattern in 2016. I shipped Zapier and IFTTT integrations back when "automation" meant first explaining to users what a trigger was, wrote interface copy in three languages for a US-primary market, and built the company's first design guidelines so the next designer wouldn't start from zero like I did.

The IoT and automation ecosystem Qmote integrated with in 2016: IFTTT, Zapier, Philips Hue, Nest, Slack, and other early smart-home services

What I kept from Qblinks

When the data and the engineers disagree, go sit in a café and watch a real person use the thing.

2.1 → 0.0

App Store rating, in ~1 month

US$0K

raised, 5,999 Kickstarter backers

0K+

tracMo downloads, iOS & Android