Mobile Integrated Solutions

I have a mix of devices and scenes that I use to control my home. From a UX point of view, I do not care which is which. They are just controls that do one thing or many things. MobiLinc separates these out into separate groups. I kind of understand, but the separation fails with the Favorites category, especially on the iPad UI.

I would prefer that I can choose whether to see things separated by type or all in one long list. When I put something in favorites, I actually do not want to see any differentiation between a scene or device. I have a porch light switch that is not part of a scene next to an office light scene. Both are the same to me from a man-machine interaction point of view.

The iPhone view is OK, in that they do show up in one list on the screen. It is not ideal, because they are grouped by type. But the iPad is bad because you have to push one of the little buttons to pick which type of favorite, so stuff is segregated that shouldn't be.

Is there a way to make my Favorites homogenous so that all my things show up together, and I can sort and group them to my liking?

Understood on all points. We've received a lot of feedback in this area and are working through how best to proceed to satisfy as many user use-cases as we can.

Wes

One thing to consider as you explore the use cases... (and consider this with a mile grain of salt, since I have only had the app for a couple days)...

Think about getting away from just drawing pretty pictures of the physical Insteon devices. That is actually somewhat regressive in terms of what Insteon, ISY, and home automation offers. Re-think in terms of how people interact with their homes. I don't want to turn a scene or a switch on or off. That is just the way that we had to interact with a physical Insteon keypad or switch. Instead, I make a room, a space, or my entire house a certain way to suit my use. So, think about organizing the UI in terms of rooms, or uses, instead of the legacy structure within an ISY. Separate from the ISY, but use the power of the ISY. Right now, MobiLinc is so tightly coupled with the ISY that constrains its potential.

For example, what if users had groupings like outside, kitchen, living room, office, etc. Then, if you pushed on a room, the list of possible options or might pop up and you could choose something. Or, think about times of day that define activities in a home. Someone might have a list of choices for mornings, afternoons, evenings, and night time that they interact with.

Then, the visualizations should not be switches, or even the light bulb, fan, lamp, etc. icons. Instead, the icons should convey the purpose of the scene or selection. (OK, an open or closed garage door would still be a helpful icon.) So, useful visualizations might be a movie screen to connote a scene intended for A/V. Then, there might be another people/social when the same room as mid-level lighting used for just sitting around and talking. Finally, there might be a library or reading icon to indicate the lighting when the room is used for reading with all the lights on full. Constraining this to a 6-button pad falls short of the potential of the UI.

Those individual KPL buttons should each be their own independent icon and option for a room. Sure, they are all the same device behind the scenes, break them out on a graphical interface. Conversely, a garage door opener with its two coupled devices should be presented as a single icon and user interface object.