CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1 - 47

You can argue that
the technology wasn't
robust enough and
maybe too expensive,
but a lot of the
problem was that it
was technology for
technology's sake.

could change quite fundamentally through
some of these technologies; they could have
large implications for economies and jobs
and so on.

Could you compare the design
thinking approach to the traditional
approach in the context of the
Internet of Things?
Well, take what used to be called "home
automation." It has been around for quite a
long time-the idea that you could plug into
washing machines and light switches and TVs
and you could talk to them and they could
be smart about things. There are a bunch of
organizations that have been working at this
for a couple of decades, and yet there is hardly
any take-up at all. You can certainly argue
that the technology wasn't robust enough and
maybe not inexpensive enough, but I think
a lot of it was because it was technology for
technology's sake. It was lots of little gadgets
that did things that didn't really have a lot of
meaning. Why should we use this? How can
it help us?

Then along comes Nest, a start-up with a
beautifully elegant concept for a thermostat.
It's a beautiful little piece of home automation,
although they don't use this term. It's also a
beautiful example of the Internet of Things,
but they don't call it that, either. They just
call it a simple way to manage the heating and
cooling in your home. Then they come out with
another product that is an elegant alternative
to smoke alarms, and suddenly they're selling
themselves to Google for $3 billion. They're
completely design-led. There is almost no new
technology in those products, but they're very
elegant assemblages of the right technology,
very much focused on, "What will make this
a wonderful, new, elegant experience for
the user?"

The Nest thermostat looks great,
and it's very easy to use, but what
are the benefits to the user of a
smart thermostat?
You want it to do a good job of making sure
the house is at the right temperature at
the right time. You want the technology
to become invisible. You want it to drop
out of your consciousness. I think that's an
important way of making things that could be
valuable to us. They're not things that we use.
In other words, they take care of things that
we used to have to apply our energy and our
attention to. I think that's a pretty interesting
strategy, actually, for how you might conceive
of developing applications and devices. What
are the things that people have to apply
attention to today but could happen invisibly
if we designed them elegantly enough by
connecting the physical to the digital? I think
that could end up being one of the most
interesting benefits of the Internet of Things.
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1
