Nest Connected Home & Smart Devices

Here’s a recent article about Nest covering all the details about how Google plans to make Nest the center of the connected home.

Ugh.

I’ll boil down the use cases and pain points they’re claiming Nest can help solve:

  1. If you’re running the wash, and Nest notices you’re not home, it’ll keep your dryer running for you so your clothes don’t wrinkle
  2. Nest can toggle your lights on and off, or turn the bulbs red, if it notices elevated CO2 levels
  3. Nest can text your neighbors if it detects smoke in the house
  4. Next can notify you if it thinks your kids are messing with it
  5. Nest & Mercedes are buddies now, so you can turn your thermostat on the EXACT SECOND you arrive home so you don’t waste energy
  6. Nest & Jawbone are buddies, so when Jawbone thinks you’ve fallen asleep it can adjust the thermostat to nighttime mode

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

My grievances from largest to smallest:

  • A big part of Nest’s whole shtick is that it can save you money by making you smarter about your utility bill. In my opinion (and in Kevin’s, who’s written about this) , it seems kind of implausible that nickel-and-dime-ing a utility bill after laying out the $250 to first buy the device is ever going to return positive from a monetary basis. That’s the benefit that #4 and #5 are trying to sell you on. And yet… there’s #1, which promises TO LEAVE YOUR DRYER RUNNING INDEFINITELY[ref]How I feel about this.[/ref] while you’re out of the house for who knows how long. It’s worth pointing out that under just regular use, your clothes dryer already accounts for roughly 12% of your house’s entire electricity bill.What interests me: How does Nest justify building a system for this? They had to have done research to identify this use case and pain point. Who in the world A) Is regularly having the problem of leaving the house with the dryer running only to come back to wrinkled clothes, and B) Is upset enough about this that they need to buy an expensive product? I need to meet these people; maybe there’s a bridge I can sell them.[ref]This assumes they’re not too busy saving up on their utility bills so they can afford a nicer Mercedes.[/ref]
  • Generally, you probably don’t really care about the room temperature once you’re asleep — after all, you’re asleep. When you do care about the room temperature is when you’re trying to fall asleep. I’m not sure what Nest & Jawbone’s intent is with #6. If they’re turning the thermostat off when inhabitants are asleep and won’t mind the heat/cool, then great, you’re saving another few nickels. If they’re saying you want to adjust the thermostat to make falling asleep more comfortable, then the timeline here totally misses the mark.Either way: For this system to work, it requires everyone in the entire household to have their own Jawbone, otherwise you’re dependent on the one Jawbone user to be last to bed and first to rise if you want to ensure that everybody’s comfortable. So I guess, now that you’re two to six $100+ devices in the hole, you’re ready to really start saving money.
  • If there’s CO2 or smoke: Please, benefits #2 and #3, don’t alert the neighbors. You’re probably not all that close to them. If you’re not home, I don’t know why Nest might necessarily expect that they are. I also don’t know why Nest thinks they’re going to be checking your windows for suspicious red lighting, or why Nest thinks they’ll have any idea what this even means without you first having to go over and teach them. Do you really want to go and have that conversation?Please, just tell the authorities.
  • It’s 2014, you own a home, you’re in a financially sound enough position to put a Nest in your home, and your unattended kids are messing with your thermostat to entertain themselves? Don’t they have iPads? If #4 is what’s getting you excited about this connected home, you’ve got way bigger problems than your utility bill.

As usual, complaining is the easy part. Anyone can complain on the internet. What I get excited about is the challenge of coming up with the right products and strategies myself.

So: What would I do if I was on Nest’s Product team? I’d stick to the core thesis which made Nest such a big hit in the first place: Pick an already-existing interface in the home which nobody really carefully thinks about, and design the shit out of it.

Specifically, I’d take the same basic interface of the Nest thermostat, make a new product, and put it right here:

showers_main_large_arrow

showers_main_large_arrow

 

It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that the Nest Thermostat would make for an amazing shower faucet interface.

Look at this picture here. What in the WORLD do those three knobs do? The middle one probably turns on the water… but getting just the right temperature? That could take weeks of practice and fine-tuning.

Isn’t it ridiculous how every time you bathe at a hotel or a friend’s house, you have to re-learn how to get the shower right?

Here’s how it should look:

 

nestshower

NestShower

Functionality:

  1. Press the Nest and the water comes on, press it again and the water goes off. Not hard to add the right design language to make this intuitive. You might even really idiot-proof this and make it so twisting the Nest turns it on, too.
  2. Like the thermostat, the front-facing display shows the temperature. Twist it to adjust to the desired degree Fahrenheit/Celsius. One color background (say, red) indicates the water hasn’t arrived at the desired temperature yet, another color (green!) says the water’s perfect.

Now all I need to learn — once — is the water temperature I prefer.

There’s challenges, sure. Shower faucet installation is substantially more complicated than the installation of a thermostat or smoke detector. You’ll probably need buy-in from plumbers. That’s a hurdle, but it’s not unsolvable.[ref]There’s actually a relatively famous HBS case study on this very subject.[/ref]

In fact, if you want to get really smart & fancy, and if you want to really pay attention user process flow and User-Centric Design, you’d employ the following design which Kevin & I have been talking about:

 

nestshower2

NestShower2

One set of controls outside of the shower, one inside. Which at first glance looks totally preposterous and superfluous.

But when you think about how you actually use your shower, isn’t it totally ridiculous that you have to dip your hand in the shower and risk getting wet to turn the shower on, or otherwise you have to stand in the shower naked with freezing water splashing at your toes while you wait for the water to heat up?

All showers are designed that way not because this is an enjoyable experience, but because in a practical sense, the faucet heads were physically attached to the pipes behind the shower. With Nest being a “smart” device, why not give users the luxury of keeping their clothes on until the water’s good and ready, instead of the other way around?

Hey, here’s that Billy Mays part: BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

There’s been rampant speculation (and from the comments section, bellyaching) that Google might plan on serving ads on the Nest display screen. Google has since denied the rumor. This was a pretty obtuse thing to complain loudly about, anyway, because nobody in any home, ever, is spending their time and undivided attention in front of their thermostat.

You know where people do spent a ton of time and undivided attention? Yep. In the shower. So if Google actually did want to make a smart device which could meaningfully serve news headlines, the weather, and the occasional ad… the Nest Shower Head would be a bona fide place to do it.

 

 

Re: Cars & Smart Screens

In the first week of March, I wrote about the devastating misapplication of modern technology in cars, and the ample opportunity for car manufacturers to improve the capabilities of rear-view mirrors.

Today, Kevin points me to this Co.Design article which proposes the same: Use cameras, reduce/obliterate blind spots. The article also talks about reduced drag, which I think is a relatively minor issue, and about many governments’ legal requirements for cars to have side view mirrors installed, which could be a substantial roadblock. Nonetheless, it sounds like we’re headed down the right path.

 

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

I think I’ve always wanted to write a post with that title.

As many of my friends — and especially my food-enthused colleages at Farmigo — are acutely aware, I’m a sandwich kind of guy.

What especially piqued the interest of my Farmigo crew, though, was the fact that I’d tend to eat the same exact sandwich for lunch every day of the week: Turkey, ham, swiss, hummus, with some week-to-week variation.

I don’t progressively benefit from eating the same meal several days in a row.[ref]This isn’t going On Fire we’re talking about here.[/ref] Rather, it’s the result of my own sandwich hacking: I figured out that I could cut down precipitously on sandwich-making process time if I made a week’s worth of sandwiches all at once as soon as I unpacked my groceries.[ref]Here’s Brian Regan who better articulates all the time I’m saving.[/ref]

Recently I took another critical look at my sandwich-making process, and as the post title states, I literally came upon the best thing since sliced bread.

Here it is:

Tirtollas

The Tortilla. It’s AWESOME.

Here’s why:

  1. Since I’m just going to roll everything up at the end, I can be even lazier about building my sandwich — I don’t need to fold oblong-shaped slices of turkey to fit my rectangular bread.
  2. On a related, but subtly distinct note: Sandwiches prepared tortilla-style have walls. In the past I’ve never really invested in complications like tomatoes, which on a normal sandwich are all but guaranteed to slide around, fall out, or leave one really strange bite at the tail end. But now, an entire world of slippery supplements is possible. (Thanks for reminding me, Peter.)
  3. I know exactly how many sandwiches I can make. Tortillas come in packs of 4, 6, 8 — you name it. I have no idea how many slices are in a loaf of bread. I can’t imagine there’s an industry standard (though at least the bread gods all seem to have agreed that there should be an even number). And I’m not about to sit there and count individual slices by looking through the plastic bag.
  4. No crust. I’m over the hurdle of eating the crust on the individual slice of bread, but I still don’t like the crusty slices at the ends of the loaf. I throw them out, which makes me feel bad because it’s clearly wasteful. But at the same time, why should I subject myself to a clearly inferior — and inherently avoidable — sandwich experience on at least a weekly basis?
  5. You know what the absolute worst part is about bread? It’s the crumbs. Crumbs which fall out of nowhere and spill everywhere. Crumbs which wind up spread all over the counter just densely enough to be a clear nuisance but not enough to really merit cleaning up. Crumbs which are magnetically attracted to the little cracks underneath the keys on your keyboard if you so much as think about taking a bite out of your sandwich and you’re standing anywhere in the same timezone as your computer. Tortillas? No crumbs.

Apparently, NASA feels the same way. I suppose they’ve been too busy playing with the dirt on Mars to clue the rest of the planet in on the fact that they knew the best thing since sliced bread — and have been using it for over 30 years.

Or maybe they just figured “The best thing since flour tortillas” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily.

Credit Card Design, Pt. III

In November 2012 I wrote about Credit Card Design. And later that month I wrote a follow-up when I saw that MasterCard basically did the exact opposite of what I proposed.

Kevin pointed me to Coin, a new sort of credit card designed to alleviate the pain of carrying multiple credit cards in your overstuffed wallet.

Coin Credit card

He and I share some concerns about the quality and effectiveness of the concept. My commentary:

Damn. I’m thrilled with how similar this looks to the design I made a year ago.

I’m not as worried as you are about the 2-year battery expiration. Two years is a long time — you’re replacing your credit cards that frequently anyway. They’ll probably deteriorate structurally by that point, anyway, from normal wear and tear. (Remember how our college ID cards needed to be replaced at about that rate?)

What I am worried about:

1. I share your concern about displaying the name and the CVV data. The latter from a use case standpoint. The former because what happens when 2+ people in your party have a Coin? How do you tell whose is whose when the waiter returns your check? Etc.

2. If it’s that easy for you to switch which card you want to use, it’s probably also that easy for the waiter to accidentally (or maliciously?) tap the card and switch it to the wrong one. You probably won’t even find out until the end of the month when you get your statement.

And opportunity:

1. $50-$100 is not really a whole lot of money when you think in terms of locking a customer into a long-term relationship. Cell phone companies figured this out ages ago and have been employing the practice of deep ($100+) phone discounts in exchange for 1- and 2- year contracts. I could easily see Bank of America, or Visa, or whoever the appropriate relevant party is, knocking off the $100 fee in exchange for setting up an account.

Travel site search results

From Quora: What’s something that is common knowledge at your work place, but would be mind blowing to the rest of us?

The loading screens you see primarily on travel websites are artificial. Finding the cheapest flights, the best hotels, and whatever else you may be looking for takes less than a second. In fact, a lot of hard work goes into making all that information very easily accessible for the web app.

The loading screen exists because when the information is returned to the user as quickly as possible, he or she will often perceive it to be less valuable. It’s as if the server didn’t put much effort into really finding a great deal. No customer ever actually articulates that; but surveys, customer testing sessions, and most importantly conversion rates support the notion that when a seven or eight second loading screen tells the user that the numbers are being crunched just for this one query, the result is perceived to be more valuable.

In other words: an objectively better solution — the same results, but instantaneous — is panned as worse because of being human. And of course, the phenomenon isn’t universal. Google sinks untold amounts of money into surfacing the fastest results possible. In fact, they’ll even quote you precisely how long a results page took to draw up — often around 0.3 seconds or less.

Moral of the story: People are weird. But you have to build for people.

Jon Stewart

On September 3, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show. He’d taken the summer off to direct Rosewater, a movie and personal project of his.

I should say. He didn’t return to The Daily Show. He returned to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. He’s eponymous. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was, in fact, hosted by John Oliver for three months.

Jon Stewart is probably the single most important cog in the Daily Show machine, and he took three months off to pursue a personal project. And the show was fineLeft in capable hands, returned in working condition.

The point is: If Jon Stewart can leave The Daily Show with Jon Stewart…there’s no reason why you or I couldn’t do the same should the right opportunity and passion arise.

Fwd: New! HARVARD 100% COTTON SWEATERS AND VESTS

I thought you guys who read me on the internet should see this. The offending email first, followed by my response. (Thanks, Manu, for the tip.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: store@thecoop.com <mailer@thecoop.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 3:40 PM
Subject: New! HARVARD 100% COTTON SWEATERS AND VESTS
To: m******@gmail.com

coop email

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Josh Petersel <peterselj@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: New! HARVARD 100% COTTON SWEATERS AND VESTS
To: Manu Lakkur <m******@gmail.com>

There’s a lot to love here.

  1. It’s 2013 and somehow it’s still going to take 7-10 days to deliver something
  2. I definitely wouldn’t consider late August to be “just in time” for cool autumn. Though then again, shipping is going to take 12-64 weeks so maybe this part is okay
  3. AWWWWWW YEAH ALL CAPS
  4. I especially like that the email header just bucks all norms and has “New!” in normal caps and the rest in ALL CAPS
  5. I’m counting 8 different caps/boldness/font size/color treatments here. (By line, 1: red caps, 2: all caps, 3: normal, 4-6: bold caps, 9: bold normal, 10 and 12: normal in smaller font, 11: Every Word Caps, 13: all-hyperlink)
  6. “Buy one get one 20% off” is pretty much the most worthless sale initiative ever
  7. They mention a 10% discount that’s not valid with other offers or discounts. Meanwhile, the whole point of the email is there’s this other new offer or discount
  8. These pictures are doing a really awesome job of letting me see how the sweaters look with a harvard logo that’s like three pixels wide. After browsing a bit, this is the biggest image I could find for the red vest. I have no idea what that logo could say
  9. It’s absolutely not clear how to order online. In fact, the only instructions they give for ordering are to call a phone number…which they say just a few lines after saying “Online purchases only”
  10. What the hell could I possibly want to inquire via fax? Who talks like this?
  11. But still, after all that. My favorite thing, without a doubt, is #HASHTAG #discountcode. (Speaking of which, I wouldn’t be surprised if the code was supposed to be #SWEAT20 instead of #SWEAT 20 and they screwed up here, too.)

Bonus points to me for coming up with a list that’s 11 items long.

Songza’s Next Killer App

Congza Soncierge

Songza is a music discovery app for desktop, mobile, and tablet — though I mostly use it on my phone.

Its killer app is the Concierge, pictured above. Instead of predominantly surfacing recommendations based on my past listening history, or my friends, or my blogs, or whatever, Songza lets me find music I want to listen to based on the mood and temporal setting I’m currently in. It’s a brilliant human answer to the real human question of “how do I find music I want to play next?”

I’m not the only one who thinks this is great. Lots of people are copying the idea. Like Martha Stewart, for example. (Obviously!)

There’s another real human problem which I think Songza, Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, and the rest of the gang of mobile music apps brush up against: They all generally rely on a steady internet connection to stream music. Which is fine when I’m at my home or workplace, but a nightmare when I’m mobile, and invariably I have to walk into a stairwell, elevator, tunnel, subway, tauntaun carcas…you get it.

How do you solve this?

Rdio & Spotify handle this with their unlimited and premium plans, respectively, which each cost $10/mo and let you sync or download playlists you want directly to your device so no internet connection is required.

You could also buy an album, and upload that to your device. But jeez, it’s 2013. That’d be embarrassing.

There’s little nuanced things which I don’t like about the solutions above.

  1. You’ve got to consciously decide which specific songs you want. And consciously curate a new album/playlist every time you want something new.
  2. At some point, you’ll have to delete things.

The two things above really don’t amount to much more than little chores. You wouldn’t break a sweat doing them. They’re really stupid human problems. But we might as well fix them.

Here’s what I’d build if I were Songza: the ability to proactively pre-load/buffer a playlist to my device for a while before heading off. I hit “pre-load” five minutes before setting off on my run, tie my shoes or something, and then after five minutes I’m out the door — with a five minute buffer to spare for that one annoying forest-y part of my run where I always seem to lose signal.

You’ve already employed this practice a million times before. Consider the last time you tried watching a YouTube video somewhere with a really poor internet connection. You’d hit pause, let it load a few minutes while you did something else, and came back once the grey bar progressed enough that you wouldn’t be continually interrupted by the “Buffering” spinner.

Monetization seems natural:

  • A 30 second buffer is free and makes the experience better for everyone.
  • A $5 monthly subscription allows me up to a 30-minute buffer, which I can use on my commute.
  • Maybe a $10 monthly subscription nets me something way longer (up to my device’s spare storage capacity) so I can use this on a flight.

And of course, my stream deletes itself automatically as I listen to it, or once I’ve closed the app (same way you’d need to reload your YouTube video if you close the window). No more chores on my part.

I can’t imagine legality to be a real issue here, because of the fact that you can already engage in this sort of behavior with YouTube. And because at this point, a sophisticated & motivated computer user can probably steal any music they want at any point, anyway. Maybe there’s a technical/logistical/legal issue with buffer speeds…perhaps you’re only allowed to buffer songs in real time (so, if you want a 15-minute buffer, you’d need to start the pre-load a full 15-minutes beforehand instead of just loading as fast as your internet speed allows). But I don’t see this being a real barrier to usage. I could arguably quite easily get into the habit of queuing up my Songza as I set my alarm clock the night before my run.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some small amount of buffer like this was already invisibly built in to the Songza app. I can understand why the app might not have a progress bar like YouTube does — it’s clutter, considering the mobile app has less screen real estate and considering you can’t really scroll through a radio stream the same way you’d scroll through a YouTube video.  But build this in as an explicit feature, and you’ve got a unique (patentable?) distinction from the rest of the pack. It also might be nice to veer away from advertising/no-advertising as the only track for revenue.