There is an important distinction - if an add-on doesnât work, HA is not (in most cases) responsible for fixing it. If an integration doesnât work, it is.
Conflating the two would likely lead to frequent bug reports that are not HAâs responsibility. If the user is not techy, I would say it is even more important they understand that they are separate applications and to not blame the HA devs if something goes wrong with an addon.
But this is still just another purely behind-the-scenes technical reason thatâs unrelated to UX. Where can I point my mother to read about why and how this is important to understand?
And once again, is the target audience for HA non-techie regular home users or not?
But they will need to, regardless if itâs in the same list or not. Which is the point Iâm making. Couple that with the fact that itâs custom, a wizard will not work because itâs not a standard part of HA. Same with frigate.
Is this what I should be showing my mother?
And once again, is HA actually meant for non-techie, regular home users or not? Just making sure!
The getting started page, yes, not just the graph 
Also note, the underlined words are links to pages that describe each item in the graph.
EDIT: As for the getting started page, I believe it needs a bit more work
All of this to say, âcombining the listsâ really does not remove any complexity. It just adds the same confusion in a different area.
Haha, okay. That says it all! Youâve really made my day!
I have no idea why. The points made here for combining the lists do not solve any problems, they just move the problem.
Your mother is VERY VERY much not the target of HA right now and wonât be for AT least 5 years.
Youâre assuming theyâre targeting the general public right now and that doesnât have to be the measure of commercially successful. Itâs not zero sum.
Home automation at large simply isnât that sophisticated yet. (cough Mattercough)
Also your mother wonât be installing frigate. Sheâll be installing a few zigbee bulbs a yellow whatâs built in and the single point of entry if they take defaults would get her there. If she does need frigate she will know how to do it
Yeah, unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of self-awareness on the matter, especially if Nabu Casa actually intends to make HA available to a wider audience beyond just non-techies.
For any real change to happen, the management team needs to step up and stop focusing solely on adding new, exciting features. As a company, they should also take responsibility for the more mundane tasks, like maintaining and improving existing solutions, such as UI/UX.
Dont get me wrong here - i very much appreciate all the work going into HA and know very well this is an onging project that is constatnly developing to become even better and more powerful. Unfortunately iâm just an product owner and no developer, so I canât contribute much. Iâm just trying (here and in other threads) to again and again steer the devs towards a more user-centric design approach.
Because letâs be honest: None of out mothers would get past the first paragraph of the getting started page before slapping the laptop screen shut. Let alone actually installing and firing up HA.
âŚbut our moms are exactly the benchmark we need to set when designing UI/UX. And mind you: Gen Z is just as computer illiterate as our parent generation.
I understand, but everyone so far seems to think Iâm against making things easier. I am not.
I want to be very clear to you, @flotteemse, and @Boilerplate4u. Making these in 1 list will not solve the confusion. It will do nothing to make the process easier. This WTH is not the answer to these problems.
Thanks a lot for finally having the guts to answer the question!
So, if you had to guess, what audience is HA targeting at the moment, and is there an official roadmap from Nabu Casa outlining their goals and timeline? For instance, are regular consumers even part of the plan?
It would be great if a stakeholder could weigh in on this!
EDIT:
Answering myself: âHow Home Assistant plans to transition from an enthusiast platform to a mainstream consumer product.â (The Verge â Apr 20, 2024, 8:05 PM GMT+2)
Yes, currently our moms are not the target user group, but if they ever shall be HA needs to actively work towards that asap. Because as I said: Non-techies are 99% of the potential user base and without them as clients, commercial sucess is impossible in the long run. If the goal is not to make HA available to them, then Nabu Casa might as well stop developement right now and cut their losses.
Unfortunately, I can confirm thatâs true. It was even on the news last week during a discussion about the PISA tests.
HA is already a commercial success⌠You can sell a product to small target markets and still be a commercial success.
Yes, currently our moms are not the target user group, but if they ever shall be HA needs to actively work towards that asap. Because as I said: Non-techies are 99% of the potential user base and without them as clients, commercial sucess is impossible in the long run. If the goal is not to make HA available to them, then Nabu Casa might as well stop developement right now and cut their losses.
Would non-techy users be interested in actually using any of the addons? I myself have Adguard Home, SSH, ESPHome, Glances, Grocy, Piper, etc. I feel like none of these are actually going to interest somebody who doesnât know the difference between a core part of HA and a separate addon.
The only thing I could see them being interested in would be the voice parts (Piper, openWakeWord, etc) and maybe Z2M, but these are already things a non-techy person would do with Alexa/Google Home or a zigbee hub (or even ZHA).
As it seems Nabu Casa has already decided that HA will transition from an enthusiast platform to a mainstream consumer product. Well, good luck with that, especially with the current approach to improving UI/UX!
But maybe thatâs all just BS, you tell me!
On the other hand, community members still think theyâre in charge of development and donât want any UI/UX changes, but the reality is, Nabu Casa has total control. So, itâll be fun to watch when that realization starts to sink in with the developer community and the real battle for control beginsâŚ
Refs:
Valid question, also depents on what HA will come to integrate natively, vs. what will remain an add-on in the future. I for example have File Editor, get HACS, Google Drive Backup, Node Red, NUT and TP-Link Omada controller installed. Some of those like file editor and HACS, Node Red and Backup are things that provide essential functionality that would render my setup useless if not available.
If the functionality of HACS and Backup would become native and file editor would no longer be needed because all relevant things can be done by UI and if UI-based automations would become powerful enought to replace Node Red for even complex automations (canât see that happen unless HA implements node-based automations natively), then maybe I iâd need no more add-ons. That would (in my opinion) be the ideal!
I should maybe apply as a product owner with Nabu Casa! 
