1 Introduction

Recently, the rapid development of electronic technology leads the product to be intelligence. Now smart device has become the focus of each product area. In CES ASIA 2015, smart home and wearable device become the most popular product of electronics show. After Apple launched the new product “Apple Watch”, other companies joined in the same area one after another, while the concept of “smart home” also swept the global world. Meanwhile, the World Internet Conference has been held twice. None of the internet enterprise can avoid the topic of smart device in discussing the future of the Internet. The major enterprises like Alibaba and Tencent pointed out that smart device would be the next innovative direction of the Internet. Now smart device quickly build its own ecosphere by “hardware” plus “service”. And the customer which smart device faces to has changed from the young or geek to normal people. A series of excellent smart devices including smart band, smart watch is approaching the public life through the good product design. In return, the popularity of smart device also affects the product architecture.

Figure 1 shows that the number of global internet device increase at a high speed from 2010. The Internet magnates evaluate the smart devices as the next market of billions level. With numerous smart devices released, we found that the feature of combining software and hardware and connectivity made the smart device different from the traditional industrial product in product design. The traditional product innovation was driven by technical innovation, but the smart device focused on mining potential user demand to achieve innovation of user experience.

Fig. 1.
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Global internet device installed base forecast

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2 Related Work

We chose myopic treatment instrument as experiment object as it was different from the smart glasses. It lacked of typical product and could not be classified as smart glasses. Unlike the Google Glass or some virtual reality devices, it aimed at the medical cure, which contains different requirement of appearance and function. According to the investigation, the myopia rate is about 22 % and in China, almost 4 hundred million people are myopia and the rate reach up to 33 %, which may even rise. The myopia has already become a big problem in China. Concerned as a way to prevent or remit myopia, the myopic treatment instrument is created to focus on the people who are myopia or may become myopia, especially children in 7 to 18 years old.

Through the market research, we found the most effective method of the treatment whose theory is to make the visible things away in order to adjust the eye muscles to release the eyeball. Currently, the treatment instrument based on the theory is quite simple. It is realized by some mechanical structure and is not smart at all. So we made some changes on the instrument to intelligentize it. During the transformation, we conduct some user investigation and depth interview to collect the key point of user experience, which contains:

  • The perspective of existing myopic treatment instrument is negative

  • The feature which users most care is medical effect, comfort and appearance.

  • Safe, technical, comfortable and portable are the key words that users describe the ideal instrument.

  • Users are willing to accept the suggestion sent by the smart device and they believe it is more correctly than their own experience.

Based on the user research, we made a prototype design (Fig. 2). We set a series of colors, which user can select their favourite one, to fit the users personalization. Undertint was used to construct the atmosphere of safety and modernization. The materials of the prototype include plastic, glass, and rubber. Metal was abandoned because of its weight can not fit the glasses. Real product may use carbon fiber instead. The inside part of frame is made of rubber so as to transform to fit different size of head. The sensors and data acquisition units are packaged on the side and behind so user would not feel uncomfortable or weird about the structure of the product.

Fig. 2.
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Product prototype

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Meanwhile we conceive the interface of application (Fig. 3). It contains the data collected under different circumstances. According to the commerciality and enjoyment, we engaged the social sharing. The interface can show about the usage and the result measured by the instrument. It would also estimate the degree of fatigue in order to give the correct suggestion. The application interface aimed to show the user how high the degree of myopia and what he should do to relax his eyes.

Fig. 3.
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Application interface

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3 Experiment

After we created a model of smart myopic treatment instrument by prototype design, we need to test its function module and explore the link between smart device and product architecture. We take an experiment by comparing the prototype and traditional treatment instrument. Volunteers would take part in two similar test to help us find out the difference of two instruments. We would observe the usage of two products, obtain the responsive data collect by sensors. The data mining can help us to acquire the preference and habit of users, also would contribute the algorithm of suggestion. As the traditional treatment instrument does not have any sensor, so we would do the statistic record manually. The research needs several volunteers and the basic requirements are:

  • Age 10-18, all genders.

  • Myopia degree 100-500.

The experiment requires the volunteers to use two instrument for about one week, at least once a day and at least 15 min each time. This is because that the therapy of the instrument requires a long duration to take effect. The data we collect would be divided into two parts: the measured data and subjective assessment. The measured data means the data directly collected by the sensors, which can represent the usage of each volunteer. The subjective assessment is about the opinion from the volunteer of the user experience that would help us to improve the product.

To analyze the measured data, a SPSS file has been created including all of the collected data. In the file, we used descriptive statistics and cross-comparison of each volunteer, including these:

  1. 1.

    According to the statistics, analyze the time and rate of usage of two treatment instruments.

  2. 2.

    Analyze the change in visual acuity of the single volunteer and judge whether the suggestion given about using eye is correct and timely.

  3. 3.

    Compare the usage of each volunteer by correlation analysis.

  4. 4.

    Four groups of antonym adjective are digitized before given to each volunteer and they had to choose the appropriate number that represented their true feelings.

  5. 5.

    According to those analysis, we would do the data mining to obtain the real requirement of users so that the prototype would get improvement.

4 Results

Figure 4 is the usage of volunteers. In the picture, it shows that both durations are normal distribution. The median of prototype is 35 and that of traditional instrument is 22. It means that volunteers used the traditional instrument for a much shorter time, just satisfied the standards of the experiment, but the time of using the prototype is more than 30 min. It is because that the appearance of the traditional instrument always hints the user that it is the medical machine and this is the therapy. This is quite oppressive and make user just want to shorten the therapy, which express clearly on the using time. On the other hand, the prototype is much more like a normal glasses as it just has two more lenses. It is easy for the volunteer to be used to the product. If someone who has already wear glasses, it would be much easier and cost less time to get started. As we all known, the time of using has been defined and has a minimum. If the users can not reach the standard, the effect of the instrument will be greatly reduced. Thus, from this standpoint, the prototype does much better than the traditional one.

Fig. 4.
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Usage of the single volunteer

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For reasons of timing, we do not get a much detail report of the visual acuity change. The picture (Fig. 5) shows that the visual acuity change within a narrow range, although the volunteer is at the age that their visual acuity can change rapidly. We can not say that the instrument actually prevents or relieve the myopia. As the nuance of the sight, we also sent the different message including warning and congratulations. According to the feedback of volunteers, we calculate that more than 80 % of the suggestions are correct and in time.

Fig. 5.
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Visual acuity change

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We found no significant correlation between the utilization rate and the visual acuity of each user as they do not have the same usage scenarios (Fig. 6). Someone is eager to cure the myopia while others do not think it is a big problem. The mentality is the determining factor that affect the usage of the product. And most people preferred to take treatment at night. There is less time for them in the morning or afternoon as they have their jobs to finish. Night is the best time for relax and taking the therapy.

Fig. 6.
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OneWay ANOVA analysis

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In the antonym section, we use four groups of adjective antonym which includes “comfortable-uncomfortable”, “portable-ponderous”, “safe-dangerous”, “modern-vintage”. The volunteers should mark two instruments from 0 to 5 point after they take the therapy. The higher score the instrument gets, the better performance it shows. As we can see (Fig. 7), the prototype gets the higher point of comfortable and portable. Its appearance and materials convince the volunteer that it is the better choice. Both instruments are believed to be safe because they are recognized to a medical treatment instrument. We found that the prototype only get a little bit higher score in “modern-vintage”. The reason might be that the appearance of the prototype is just like the normal glasses which could not convince users to be a tech device and they even did not realize it as a smart device. To sum up, the prototype performs better than the traditional instrument. Because of the statistics is based on the current volunteers, so it only represents these volunteers’ opinion and we would consider to expand the number of participants.

Fig. 7.
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Antonym analysis

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During the analysis, we found that our prototype has a competitive advantage in traditional treatment instrument. There are several features which make it a well-designed product:

  • The style of the prototype is quite like the normal glasses which can reduce the learning cost.

  • Time of using meets the standard of therapy while the traditional one can not reach, which means the treatment is much better and more effective.

  • The accuracy of the suggestions which the prototype provides failed to achieve our expectation. The usage scenario sometimes interferes the judgement generated by existing algorithm. And this is going to be improved.

5 Conclusion and Future Work

In the research, we invited several volunteers to take part in the experiment. We obtained the data of them by observation and collection. To explore the link between smart device and product architecture, we conducted the data mining and acquire many information about our prototype. The whole process led to an conclusion: we thought that the smart device provided a better user experience to conduct the product design and we believed that this could lead the revolution of product architecture and user experience.

First is the diversity of user experience. The model of smart device is the combination of software and hardware. User can experience the product through the application on the mobile phone as well as focusing on the appearance. Designer should pay more attention on the digital screen as interaction design now does not only means the operation we do in reality, but also on the website and mobile devices. Taking our prototype as example, we provide a series of application user interface including test data, suggestion, social sharing and so on. The well-designed interface can attract the attention of users, which can maintain user’s dependence on product.

Secondly, timeliness is a potential key-point of interaction that many designers do not realize. People always want the initial reactions or feedbacks return from the product. Just like a conversation, the quick response makes the talk heated and no response just ends the talk. In the usage of product, some volunteers complain about that they do not know whether the product is active or what step they have reach. One way to solve the problem is add guiding lights, but it is quite strange for some wearable devices because it makes people seem odd or embarrassed, which prompt users stop using the product any more. The smart device has a smart solution that it sends the information on the mobile devices which is timely and natural.

Another point is about the accuracy. User experience is measured or estimated by user interview. One thing has already caused attention that people are not willing to show their real face to the interviewer. This leads the question that the interviewees give the answer they really choose or just to fulfill the investigation. Only the experienced UX designer or interviewer can lead the interview to tell the truth in a relax environment. However, the smart device avoid this defect because it certainly collect the data which shows the real usage of one user. Numbers don’t lie, what we need is an accurate algorithm and enough data. The accuracy will increase as the size of data grows larger. And then the big data can simulate users’ behavior and habit.

The last one is the persistence. After the product gathers the first batch of users, customers and company can communicate on the platform created by the smart device. Based on the data mining, fast iteration is applied to the product. The part which users are dissatisfied with can be find out and improve quickly while the core competencies are preserved.

To summarize, we conducted an experiment of smart device focusing on the myopia treatment instrument. The experiment collected data from volunteers and conducted the data mining. We not only do the data analysis but also discuss the link between smart device and user experience. We believed that the smart device could challenge the traditional user experience and product architecture. Smart device could provide better user experience than traditional industrial product as it based on the platform built by the Internet.

During the research, we did not take an experiment with larger scale for the reason of time and fund. We hope to carry out a larger and longer experiment if possible. The number of volunteers can enrich the database and make the statistics more accurate. And the long-term track on the volunteers can not only update the database but also modify and improve the product prototype.

In the future, we will focus more than the myopia treatment instrument but also other smart devices. When new smart devices created by the technology companies, we will choose the typical and general ones to make more test and research. We will pay attention to the new technology which can be applied to just like augmented reality.