W15 - Scenario-Driven Design Thinking

Huawei recently launched its whole-home smart product line. After watching several demo videos, I’m optimistic about their solution. Smart home technology is no longer novel, but most efforts still focus on individual smart devices. Building a single smart device and delivering a fully integrated whole-home system are fundamentally different challenges, and a company that can do the latter well has yet to emerge. From my own experience, many devices actually degrade the user experience once connected. The core difficulty of whole-home intelligence is tightly integrating each node on the same network so every device becomes a functioning joint. Huawei proposed a 1+2+N product architecture: one hub, two networks, and N scenarios. It echoes the design philosophy in Wang Ziru’s DIY future home from years ago. Undoubtedly, Wang’s approach is costly and demands strong DIY skills—his reputation for rigor is well-earned. Lowering the entry barrier is one reason I’m interested in Huawei’s consumer-focused offering.

What also impressed me was how clearly it revealed an evolution in product design thinking. Hardware product iteration has generally progressed from supply-chain-driven, to product-driven, and now to scenario-driven. In earlier years, hardware development tended to look upward: white goods are a typical example—manufacturers see new technologies and modules from upstream suppliers and force them into the next-generation product regardless of whether users need them. That’s supply-chain-driven. In the mobile internet era, internet product thinking deeply influenced hardware: iteration came from user needs and attention to experience, a downward-looking process. This usually meant a single device solving a specific problem better—typified by many of Xiaomi’s IoT products—this is product-driven. Today, under the backdrop of ubiquitous connectivity, we’ve entered the era of scenarios: the same device behaves heterogeneously across different spaces—for example, a phone in a car, at home, or in the office. User needs switch as they move between spaces, changing as a set. Huawei captured this trend by offering scenarios as the basic operational unit for users, rather than the on/off of a particular device. Users only need to care whether they are entertaining guests or watching a show, not how to control indoor lighting.

This also evokes the subtle relationship between control precision and user experience. Apple frequently leverages this trade-off by elevating the smallest unit of interaction, sacrificing precise control to improve the overall experience. For example, from its inception the iPhone camera hides professional photographic parameters from users and replaces them with modes. The iPad Pro’s cursor uses a nearest-attachment algorithm instead of giving users absolute control over the cursor.