Agile multi-project manage­ment for smart home

The Home Connect App offers the user a wide range of intuitive solutions that make everyday household tasks more efficient. The app integrates the entire networked household appliance portfolio – from oven, cooker and extractor hood to dishwasher, refrigerator, washing machine and dryer to fully automatic coffee machine and vacuum cleaner robot – securely and across all brands.

Behind the overall project are around 60 individual topics from the IoT sector each year. Each of these topics has its own requirements and stakeholders and is handled individually by the international team.

UXMA supports BSH in the development of a concept which integrates interaction and operating for the entire household appliance portfolio, the design of a brand-neutral, modern look and feel as well as the implementation of the app for iOS/Android – natively as well as in web technologies, backend and frontend.

The overarching task in all sub-segments: not to create 60 apps from the 60 individual topics, but to understand Home Connect as a user-centered ecosystem. A task that represents a challenge for UX design as well as software development and the overarching software architecture. In addition to working on the content of the respective topics, the development partnership relies on transparency, agile approaches and, above all, empathy and the right management tools to manage a project that is complex and extensive.

Regardless of whether restrictions and the resulting barriers are permanent, temporary or situational: The goal of accessibility is to remove barriers or prevent them from arising in the first place.

As a value-driven company, UXMA sees accessibility as an important part of designing outstanding and sustainable products. It is our declared goal to make Home Connect equally accessible to all people. In other words, this means proactively identifying barriers and comprehensively recording influencing factors and places of use. The results will benefit both the new user groups and all existing users.

More than ever, we are driven by our ambition to develop an inspiring system for living at home. Research in the context of artificial intelligence and machine learning is part of UXMA’s self-image. Only through innovative products, intelligent systems and communicating services will life in the future be so unburdening, individual and sustainable.