“Brand and model drop-down lists are the bane of my life!” [Bane definition: ‘A cause of harm, ruin or death’]. This might sound like hyperbole when applied to a UX challenge, but that is how our designer responded to a request to create an easy-to-use interface for a consumer to identify their mobile phone via make and model drop-down lists. “Huge cause of flow abandonment, and they often make the wrong selection anyway.”
It’s easy to see why this is the case: if the user selects ‘Samsung’ or ‘LG’ in the brand drop-down, they will be faced with a list of potentially hundreds of rows in the next drop-down in order to select the model. If they get the selection wrong, they might receive an incorrectly sized case for their phone: or, they could end up insuring something they don’t own, and only realise when needing to make a claim. Or worse: they might be unable to correctly capture data signals from a medical sensor.
Fortunately, this is a challenge no longer; the simple presentation of a DeviceAtlas QR code on the device selection page of a website enables the user to automatically identify their device, just by using it to scan the QR code. This in turn populates the device selection interface with well-structured and precise device information.
In addition to identifying the device model, its authenticity is verified, providing both the consumer and the service provider with assurance of its integrity.
Visiting the web page with the device itself makes the process even easier; it can be automatically identified and verified, with no user action required at all.
The DeviceAtlas QR code can be easily reused in other applications, enabling the elimination of device selection dropdown lists forever, to the benefit of the bottom line of service providers and the blood pressure of their UX designers equally.
Note: on desktop and tablet devices a scannable QR code is displayed. Scanning this code on a mobile device instantly replaces the QR code with the correct details for the scanning device.
Of course, there are always some challenges to any implementation: where device models cannot be distinguished from each other due to the internal hardware being the same, a set of devices is returned (Apple is a well-known example). However, this at least means that the consumer is selecting from a very much shorter list. Similarly, some browsers mask the device so that it cannot be identified at all (Mozilla, Brave et al). This is a user choice: the trade-off is between privacy and UX. They will need to manually identify their device, if the service offers this option. (All data is non-PII, of course; this is a core DeviceAtlas principle.)
To sum up, DeviceAtlas provides all the tools needed to support provision of services for mobile devices: a full device catalogue, updated daily; automated identification and characterisation of devices online; and verification of devices to authenticate and validate visitors.
