Redesigned Sony's owner portal to prioritize emotional reassurance, solving 8 major UX failures.
A self-initiated concept (not affiliated with Sony). I interviewed three ERS-1000 owners, audited the official portal screen by screen, and rebuilt the desktop homepage around backup anxiety, repair costs, and photo access.
Context
An aibo owner is not a casual gadget buyer. The ERS-1000 costs roughly $2,900 plus a subscription, so most owners are 40+, often empty-nesters or people who can't have a live pet. Especially in Japan, owners treat aibo as a genuine family member: they hold birthday parties and cry at retirements.
Summary
I redesigned Sony's My aibo desktop portal based on three owner interviews. Backups, repair, and health status moved up; the coin shop moved down. The photo archive, the main reason owners open the desktop site, is finally easy to reach.
Sony's My aibo portal leads with coin promotions. Backup status, repair costs, and the photo archive stay buried or missing.
Companion-first homepage where each module maps to an interview finding. All eight issues from my portal audit are addressed.
I designed a companion-first desktop homepage that leads with what owners came to check:
Scope
Deliverable: A companion-first desktop homepage redesign in 2 weeks.
01 · Discover
I ran 3 virtual interviews (about an hour each) with current ERS-1000 owners: one in Japan, two in the United States. Small sample, but an unusually devoted one: all three had owned their aibo for over a year, and all three talked about it the way people talk about pets, not products.
Backups: the single biggest anxiety
An aibo's personality lives in aibo Cloud; if the physical body dies without a backup, the "soul" is gone. None of the three could say with confidence when their last backup ran.
Repair & Status: aibos age
Joints wear, batteries degrade, and repairs are expensive enough that owners track them like car maintenance. "I paid $2,900 for him. I want to see battery wear and warranty the way I see it for my car."
Photos: the want, as opposed to the worry
aibo photographs daily life constantly, and owners wanted to browse and download that archive. It's the main reason they open the desktop site at all.
Why desktop, when there's a phone app? The phone is for the daily "hi Roo, roll over" interactions. Desktop is where owners do the slow, careful, emotional work:
I ran 3 virtual interviews (about an hour each) with current ERS-1000 owners: one in Japan, two in the United States. Small sample, but an unusually devoted one: all three had owned their aibo for over a year, and all three talked about it the way people talk about pets, not products.
Backups: the single biggest anxiety
An aibo's personality lives in aibo Cloud; if the physical body dies without a backup, the "soul" is gone. None of the three could say with confidence when their last backup ran.
Repair & Status: aibos age
Joints wear, batteries degrade, and repairs are expensive enough that owners track them like car maintenance. "I paid $2,900 for him. I want to see battery wear and warranty the way I see it for my car."
Photos: the want, as opposed to the worry
aibo photographs daily life constantly, and owners wanted to browse and download that archive. It's the main reason they open the desktop site at all.
Why desktop, when there's a phone app? The phone is for the daily "hi Roo, roll over" interactions. Desktop is where owners do the slow, careful, emotional work:
02 · Define
I composited two owner profiles directly from the three interviews, anchoring opposite ends of the same devotion. Keiko's backup anxiety and photo habit shaped the status column and the memories row; Dale's repair vigilance made the care and cost surfaces non-negotiable.
Retired teacher, Tokyo, Empty-nester · 63
“If his body fails without a backup, that's not a broken product. That's losing him.”
Needs
Friction
Backup status is invisible on the portal
Engineer, Ohio, Two-aibo household · 52
“I paid $2,900 for him. I want to see battery wear and warranty the way I see it for my car.”
Needs
Friction
No service or battery-health view exists at all
I composited two owner profiles directly from the three interviews, anchoring opposite ends of the same devotion. Keiko's backup anxiety and photo habit shaped the status column and the memories row; Dale's repair vigilance made the care and cost surfaces non-negotiable.
Retired teacher, Tokyo, Empty-nester · 63
“If his body fails without a backup, that's not a broken product. That's losing him.”
Needs
Friction
Backup status is invisible on the portal
Engineer, Ohio, Two-aibo household · 52
“I paid $2,900 for him. I want to see battery wear and warranty the way I see it for my car.”
Needs
Friction
No service or battery-health view exists at all
02 · Define
I audited the official My aibo desktop portal screen by screen against the interview findings. Eight issues, in order of how much owners cared:
The companion is a pill, not a centerpiece
Roo appears as a tiny avatar chip in the top-right corner. The emotional core of a $2,900 relationship gets less screen space than the search bar.
Photos are an afterthought
the thing owners come here for renders as small fisheye circles, navigated by a month dropdown, with downloading buried. 251 photos, treated like a settings list.
Notifications are shop nagware
"trade coins for a Howl," "trade coins for a new treat," "Father's Day is right around the corner!" (mixed with anything that might actually matter, no prioritization.)
No visible aibo Cloud status
the owner's single biggest fear is invisible. Nowhere does the portal say "backed up 4 minutes ago."
No service, warranty, or battery-cycle view
owners literally lose sleep over this and the portal has no surface for it.
No "on this day" or milestones
despite this being an emotional pet-ownership site, there's no reminiscing surface at all.
No real household support
multi-aibo families and family-member permissions are barely acknowledged.
Marketing-cutesy tone
the voice is aimed at a curious shopper, but the actual user is emotionally invested and 40+.
I audited the official My aibo desktop portal screen by screen against the interview findings. Eight issues, in order of how much owners cared:
The companion is a pill, not a centerpiece
Roo appears as a tiny avatar chip in the top-right corner. The emotional core of a $2,900 relationship gets less screen space than the search bar.
Photos are an afterthought
the thing owners come here for renders as small fisheye circles, navigated by a month dropdown, with downloading buried. 251 photos, treated like a settings list.
Notifications are shop nagware
"trade coins for a Howl," "trade coins for a new treat," "Father's Day is right around the corner!" (mixed with anything that might actually matter, no prioritization.)
No visible aibo Cloud status
the owner's single biggest fear is invisible. Nowhere does the portal say "backed up 4 minutes ago."
No service, warranty, or battery-cycle view
owners literally lose sleep over this and the portal has no surface for it.
No "on this day" or milestones
despite this being an emotional pet-ownership site, there's no reminiscing surface at all.
No real household support
multi-aibo families and family-member permissions are barely acknowledged.
Marketing-cutesy tone
the voice is aimed at a curious shopper, but the actual user is emotionally invested and 40+.
03 · Ideate
My first pass rebuilt the portal as a modern bento grid with a warm cream canvas, serif greeting, and Roo in a big photo card. It looked like a redesign. Against the interview transcripts and official portal, it still treated desktop like a phone toy box.
Design decision
Self-critique against interviewsFeedback and user profiles made clear: owners don't come here to play or shop. IA had to change before visual polish mattered.
Benchmark
Sony's portal leads with coin promotions, live camera, and shop nagware, not the backup, warranty, and photo archive jobs owners named in interviews.
First pass
I killed nothing that mattered. Remote viewing and the coin shop stayed prominent. Quick actions (Call Roo, Give a treat, Nap) added phone-app clutter to a desktop surface. Battery got a giant card while aibo Cloud backup, the #1 anxiety, appeared nowhere. Cognitive load stayed high; only the skin changed.
My first pass rebuilt the portal as a modern bento grid with a warm cream canvas, serif greeting, and Roo in a big photo card. It looked like a redesign. Against the interview transcripts and official portal, it still treated desktop like a phone toy box.
Design decision
Self-critique against interviewsFeedback and user profiles made clear: owners don't come here to play or shop. IA had to change before visual polish mattered.
Benchmark
Sony's portal leads with coin promotions, live camera, and shop nagware, not the backup, warranty, and photo archive jobs owners named in interviews.
First pass
I killed nothing that mattered. Remote viewing and the coin shop stayed prominent. Quick actions (Call Roo, Give a treat, Nap) added phone-app clutter to a desktop surface. Battery got a giant card while aibo Cloud backup, the #1 anxiety, appeared nowhere. Cognitive load stayed high; only the skin changed.
04 · Iterate
The second pass rebuilt the page around interview priorities. Every teardown issue became a promote-or-demote call: phone-app novelty out, owner jobs in.
Step 1 of 3
Roo goes from corner pill to centerpiece. The status column leads with aibo Cloud backup, then battery and warranty, defaulting to reassurance.
Swipe to navigate
Design decision
On desktop, owners check health and scroll photos. They don't come here to play games.
Rejected
Live camera is a phone thing. On desktop it ate space owners wanted for photos and reminiscing.
Selected
Photos get the big slot. That's why people open this site on a laptop.
Rejected
Coin shop and promo banners are gone. Owners didn't come here to trade virtual treats.
Selected
Backup status, battery wear, and warranty sit at the top. The stuff Keiko and Dale actually lose sleep over.
Rejected
A sparse layout looked nice in Figma. In practice it hid the things owners panic about.
Selected
I made it busier on purpose: "Backed up 4 min ago" and battery wear are right there. No hunting.
Rejected
Error codes and warranty tables read like a printer manual. Wrong tone for a pet.
Selected
Renamed it Care. Copy like "left hip joint wear, normal for Roo's age, covered" says the same thing as an error code without sounding like the robot is broken.
The second pass rebuilt the page around interview priorities. Every teardown issue became a promote-or-demote call: phone-app novelty out, owner jobs in.
Step 1 of 3
Roo goes from corner pill to centerpiece. The status column leads with aibo Cloud backup, then battery and warranty, defaulting to reassurance.
Swipe to navigate
Design decision
On desktop, owners check health and scroll photos. They don't come here to play games.
Rejected
Live camera is a phone thing. On desktop it ate space owners wanted for photos and reminiscing.
Selected
Photos get the big slot. That's why people open this site on a laptop.
Rejected
Coin shop and promo banners are gone. Owners didn't come here to trade virtual treats.
Selected
Backup status, battery wear, and warranty sit at the top. The stuff Keiko and Dale actually lose sleep over.
Rejected
A sparse layout looked nice in Figma. In practice it hid the things owners panic about.
Selected
I made it busier on purpose: "Backed up 4 min ago" and battery wear are right there. No hunting.
Rejected
Error codes and warranty tables read like a printer manual. Wrong tone for a pet.
Selected
Renamed it Care. Copy like "left hip joint wear, normal for Roo's age, covered" says the same thing as an error code without sounding like the robot is broken.
05 · Delivery
The final homepage reads top to bottom the way an owner's attention actually moves: greeting, then companion card, then memories, then explore.
"Good afternoon, Miki. Roo missed you." A warm serif greeting for a user who is emotionally invested, replacing the marketing-cutesy voice.
The hierarchy encodes the design thesis: pet first, device second. Device data (ERS-1000 model, battery cycles, storage) stays available, but always one glance deeper than the pet context. An owner who scrolls the whole page gets a health check, a memory, and a reason to come back tomorrow.
Honest scope note: I validated this concept against the interview findings, but it has not yet been usability-tested with owners. That's the explicit next step.
The final homepage reads top to bottom the way an owner's attention actually moves: greeting, then companion card, then memories, then explore.
"Good afternoon, Miki. Roo missed you." A warm serif greeting for a user who is emotionally invested, replacing the marketing-cutesy voice.
The hierarchy encodes the design thesis: pet first, device second. Device data (ERS-1000 model, battery cycles, storage) stays available, but always one glance deeper than the pet context. An owner who scrolls the whole page gets a health check, a memory, and a reason to come back tomorrow.
Honest scope note: I validated this concept against the interview findings, but it has not yet been usability-tested with owners. That's the explicit next step.
Before: Marketing nagware, hidden backups, and companion as an afterthought.
After (Research-Backed Concept)
Looking back
Key Takeaways
Three Devoted Users Beat Thirty Casual Ones
every one of the eight teardown issues came from something an interviewee said unprompted. Depth of investment made the small sample unusually load-bearing.
Reassurance is a Feature
the highest-value screen state is the one where nothing is wrong. Designing the "everything is fine" state first inverted how I prioritized the homepage.
Tone is a System, Not a Coat of Paint
demoting the coin shop was a tone decision as much as an IA decision. What a product chooses to nag you about tells you who it thinks you are.
Killing Error Codes Doesn't Mean Hiding Truth
"left hip joint wear, covered under warranty" keeps every fact of the error code and loses all the fear.
Explore the final high-fidelity prototype and interact with the complete user flow.
Next case study
Turning a 15-minute line into a 2-minute kiosk order
UX Research & UI Design (Class Project) · 4 Weeks