Stop saying "Device"
Especially if you are working with apps, you probably have some dialog, help document, request interstitials, or just status that refers to a “device.”
This needs to stop. Why? It is maddeningly vague. Which device?
I first took it seriously enough to solve this issue while working with automotive and industrial control systems. We actually had cases of:
Device (subsidiary control module), connected to…
Device (master control module), connected to…
Device (communications adapter), which can be connected thru…
Device (WiFi access point or repeater), connected to…
Device (computer or phone where you are seeing all these messages).
And yes, real-world we had messages in the app – and especially engineer-written popup alerts – that referred to each and every one of these as a device. A couple times, two in one message! “Device not communicating: Be sure the device is keyed on and has sufficient voltage, then connect or re-connect your device.”
And this isn’t me being pedantic, but it causes real world confusion. Users get lost, make mistakes, and even when they call customer care do not share a useful language for what device is at play so it takes forever to solve the problem. Go ahead, built a help system (not an FAQ!) where a bunch of the categories are “Device” and see how that goes.
What instead? Be specific. I say: be proud. So you have an app to control connected IoT home automation. Great! What do you, in sales and marketing, call the thermostat, the lighting controller? Oh, those words? Then why aren’t you using them?!?!
Phone or tablet?
One that hangs up people a lot for the “device” term is that apps and websites can work on multiple form factors of client, so they fall back to “device.” Two solutions to this:
Technical – Detect the client device category. There are several approaches, if you want to know more because your engineers are baffled you can ask but it’s not that hard, make them do it.
Then, make content come from a CMS/LMS, instead of all being hard coded, and dynamically update terms based on platform.
Mindset – If you cannot, at least short term, get a technical solution then live with best likely case. If the app is mostly used on the phone, but can be on a tablet: say “phone.” I have had to specifically do this, and watched people read it on tablets in field usability tests. Not a single problem with it.