It is very interesting technology. Basically the device to be configured put the wifi device in “monitoring” mode,
and the app will send udp wifi packet with different length, which different length indicate different “character”.
http://depletionregion.blogspot.ch/2013/10/cc3000-smart-config-transmitting-ssid.html
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/61704/how-does-ti-cc3000-wifi-smart-config-work