Beyond Mobile, Beyond WebThe Internet of things needs our help

IA Summit 5 April 2013

@scottjenson

jenson.org

? SpeedSizeCost

How do we, as a team, think and build new products? We are all interested about the future. We even come to conference like this to try to answer that question, “What’s happening next?”

When we reflect on how far we’ve come, most people just focus on the holy trinity of speed size and cost. But these are *safe* predictions, of course things will get smaller/faster/cheaper. That is incremental innovation and really are just extending the current paradigm.

Comfort vs Risk

What’s happening next? Easy, it’s the iWatch! Soon to be followed by the iRing and the iTieTack.

The reason people are so excited about the iWatch is that it makes so much sense (from a certain naive perspective) We can all see it, it’s not a huge leap so we inherently like it. Of course, the iWatch, if it ever comes, will likely be fine product. We just need to be clear : it’s a fairly conservative extension of an existing paradigm.

The really big changes are very hard to see. Most stare you right in the face as you walk by. A creative idea takes an equally creative person to understand it. This is why people are so surprisingly conservative when it comes to innovation. While I was at frog, it became painfully clear that much of my job was coaching as our clients all wanted innovation but at the same time, they were deathly afraid of risk. It’s a shocking paradox isn’t it? But it explains why, when thinking of the future, we tend to fall back on known, existing patterns

Default ThinkingI’ve written about this before, in a few articles and a book chapter about how throughout the history of technology we never take a shiny new technology and run with it. We almost always turn around and use it for an something were doing yesterday. We evaluate tomorrow’s technologies by yesterday’s tasks. A classic example is how people initially read radio plays on TV. Of course, they quickly figured it out but that’s how we humans work: we stumble our way into innovation. It’s why designers like to prototype, we don't know what we don’t know.

We look at the present through a rearview mirror;we march backwards into the future

Marshall McLuhan

This is so beautifully phrased and explains why we get technology predictions so horribly wrong. We predict by looking backwards, we don’t appreciate how we almost always stumble our way into the future.

So how have we been stumbling? What’s actually been happening recently? We haven’t seen the iWatch (yet) so what has been showing up in the mean time?

Things like the Nest come along

and the Twine hobbyist sensor, and GloCap, a smart pill bottle the calls you when you forget to take your pills, and about a dozen smart light bulb projects on kickstarter. These are wacky crazy new directions that don’t fit with our current understanding.

But if you throw in the idea of a smart city, things really start to get confusing. We are in a situation where the world is running ahead of our ability to conceptualize what is happening. The iWatch is a fine product that is extending and old model. It doesn’t help us make sense of this crazy explosion of new-ness.

It took us more than 20 years, but computing has finally moved from conserving resources ingeniously to squandering them creatively.

David Gelernter

Gartner Hype Cycle

How many of you have heard of the Gartner Hype Cycle? It’s got it’s pros and cons but it’s a fairly entertaining look at how we explore and use any new technology.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Technology Trigger

Gartner Hype Cycle

Peak of inflated

expectations

Gartner Hype Cycle

Trough of disillusionment

Gartner Hype Cycle

Slope of enlightenment

Gartner Hype Cycle

Plateau of productivity

Gartner Hype Cycle

Internet of Things

Quantum Computing

3D Printing

Virtual Worlds

Speech Recognition

App Stores

And here are examples along this curve: Quantum Computing, 3d Printing, Virtual Worlds, speech recognition

Where do you think the internet of things is on this graph? It's still a trigger technology, Keep in mind this was their 2012 report… But I'd claim that the IoT is very quickly rising right into 3D printing territory. The reason is simple, there is another technology that it is drafting behind: App Stores. It is the success of Smart Phone in general, and apps specifically that is fueling this boom. It is allowing new devices to be created even easier and faster.

But there is a huge risk here. It's default thinking all over. We're taking the amazing crazy potential of the IoT and tying it to a technology that is quickly heading to trough territory...

Why mobile apps must die?

It’s why I wrote Mobile Apps must die! People thought it was a rant about web vs native apps but that wasn’t it at all. http://jenson.org/mobile-apps-must-die/

Apps just can’t be the only tool in the tool kit. Are we really going to have an app for every store we go to, every product we buy and every new interactive device that is coming our way?

How many of you, in the last few weeks, have gone through your phones, deleting the old apps you’re not using any more? It’s a rhetorical question, we ALL do this! We are gardening our phones. But why? We’re rational beings, what is the motivation? It’s simple, dead apps get in the way. Have any of you walked into a store and seen a sign ‘We’re in the app store!” and just shrugged, you couldn’t be bothered? At frog, that type of user pain/apathy was design gold, you kill for that type of insight but here we are experiencing this nearly every day.

There is a ‘thin crust of effort’ that is forming around apps, there is a certain amount of pain that is involved in using them today! Imagine when we are surrounded by 100s of more smart devices, it’s clearly unsustainable.

Value > PainValue

There is a subtle force at work here, it’s not always about technology, sometimes it’s also about design. There is a basic design axiom that is at the heart of almost all design: Value must be greater than pain. Let me give you an example. In the 1990’s The UX for SMS was *horrible* but it’s value was so high that people persevered

Value > PainPain

At about the same time Google was able to reduce the page weight of google.com and got it to load 4 TENTHS of second faster. It was to the pixel, exactly the same. What happened, usage went up multiple percentage points (That’s actually a REALLY big deal for Google) In this case Value was identical but just by reducing pain, the product was improved.

Value > Pain

Triumph of the Mundane

When pain goes to zero, value can go to zero as well. I call this Triumph of the Mundane as it’s the LITTLE things that are going to have value, as long as we can make them very very easy to use.

But when talking about the internet of things we are clearly into a full blow hype bubble. You just have to read any article about it and people are promising crazy things. We’ve seen this movie before: Over promising, under delivery, and big disillusionment.

Discovery

Control

Coordination

Every time I talk about the IoT I get questions that show that people really, deeply don’t understand what it is about. My favorite example is the smart toaster, the derogatory poster child of the IoT. When people say that “I don’t want apps on my toaster” I want to shake them by their shoulders! “That’s *your* old paradigm, not mine. It’s too easy to criticize a new technology using old concepts. Smart devices are not about apps! They are about 3 basic layers of functionality: Discovery, Control, and Coordination

Discovery: Finding my devices nearby. Most companies would kill for just this basic feature. Depending on how clever they are with the URL it can span goofy marketing page (boring) to SPIME like deep interaction with my device history.

Control: A small increment in cost lets me control the device. This same URL model has moved us from web site directly to Nest because now I’m talking to MY device. While prices are still high, finding the right balance will be tricky but as the costs fall, the choice will become trivial. This needs ‘another Apple’ to take the chance because once it becomes clear it is possible, EVERYONE will want to jump into the pool.

Coordination: This is the hard one as it involves so much cooperation. I love the overall vision but it will take time for companies to get on board with enough standards to make this happen. Think about today. I can hardly get Mint.com to access all of financial records, it’s constantly breaking down. We expect massive data and control settings to work across every world wide manufacturer?

My point is that we need to start with the first two: Discovery and Control. They are very much within our reach and offer significant value.

Bees

Bats

Bears ....Big Screen + General OS

.... focused function device

....only data

As a designer, I feel strongly there is power in words. The IoT is such a messy ball of stuff that it’s hard to talk about it. It’s useful to break it up into three basic groups: Bears, bats, and bees.

http://jenson.org/of-bears-bats-and-bees-making-sense-of-the-internet-of-things/

Bats .... focused function device

Both Bears and Bees are somewhat old school. What they are trying to do is fairly well established. What I find most interesting are Bats as they are breaking new ground and creating not only new product concepts but how to even things about functionality.

Just in Time Interaction

There is a wide range of devices from the nest down to bus stops (which are just a steel pole stuck in concrete) There is a continuum of device from standalone processor to a tagged object that points to a web page. But, from a design point of view, they are all the same: they want your attention and you need to interact with them. The problem is that we are still using our old school paradigm of ‘native apps’ to deal with them. While I might be fine with an app for my Nest, am i going to download an app for ever store I enter, every smart poster to see, or every smart museum I enter? As we move to single use experiences, apps become hopelessly quaint.

Insanity is doing exactly the same thing....and expecting a different result.Einstein

Paradigm Shift

We need a paradigm shift: to see things in a new way. Thomas Kuhn talked about how shifts occur in the scientific community. Before every great shift was a ‘model crisis’ where things started to fray at the edge. Nothing dramatic, the old guard always yells relax, thing are fine and the new blood keeps pushing for something new. It’s a classic tension.

Kuhn Cycle NormalScience

Model Drift

Model Crisis

Model Revolution

Paradigm Change         

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

What is our model crisis?

Software Buy Install Reuse

What is our model crisis? We are moving from a model based on Software, where we buy, install and reuse

What is our model crisis?

Experience Discover Use Forget

Software Buy Install Reuse

To one based on experience where we discover, use and forget.

When I buy a smart toaster I don’t want to buy the software, that is a meaningless concept

Discovery Control Coordination

QRCodeNFCWirelessBluetoothWifiBattery life?Security?

RESTful APIHardware costsStandardsProtocols

Data standardsStorage standardsDevice vs Service

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points

Alan Kay

We need to stop thinking of the mobile web as a shoehorned version of the desktop web. The mobile web is going to go where the desktop and native apps can never go....

Silos are counter productive

Remember these guys? They were the ‘pre-web’, for a while, they were much better than the web. They competed, tried to encourage people to come to them. The web, at least initially, was quite bad, but it eventually overran all of them for the simple reason of scope and reach: they all couldn’t have everything.

Yet this is what we’re doing today: we’re getting locked into silos of devices and content. If an open solution gets started, it will almost certainly be worse at first, but it will structurally encourage a much better, broader approach. It will blow past these silos over time.

Malcom McLean

Do you know this guy? He is my hero! He single handedly invented the container ship business and then, realizing that it would only work if the world standardized, he GAVE AWAY ALL OF THIS PATENTS! Of course this was very enlightened self interest as his company reaped the benefit of this but it was still an overall plus for the world. He was voted ‘Maritime Man of the Century!” for his work.

Internet ≠ WebOpen

ExpansiveClosed

Constricted

The internet is not the same as the web. The internet is build on basic open standards like DNS and HTTP. The web, while basically open, has quickly encrouaged silo apps like amazon/facebook that try to keep you there, doing everything within that world.

All my data, in one place

I chuckle whenever people talk about ‘THE cloud’. That’s not quite right...

...it’s really more about a sky FULL of separate clouds

API

We need to work towards a model where we have a single API that connects to OUR cloud. It’s not the devices’ data, its MY data. There are some great companies that are exploring the personal storage space that are beginning to make this happen. I strongly suggest you check out Spark Devices as they are building this model correctly. You can use their servers to store data but you can easily choose someone else.

Google your room

Next ‘Google’

We need an open source ‘Growl’ like app that finds all devices nearby and presents them to me. Eventually, this service will need a cloud component to rank it but this too should be open so that Google, Bing, etc can all play. Indexing the physical world is the next google

2:12 PM3G

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Musée du Louvre

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Toyota Prius

Maria Jenson

Bang & Olufson

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2:12 PM3G

Here is a quick example but it applies just as much to Google Glass as to Smart phones, or even smart TVs... But if it were to find something smart nearby, it just lists it in the notification bar. When I click on it, it just shows a browser ‘chrome’ (with no browser overhead) This is fast, quick and involves no app download. Yes, the mobile web isn’t as functional as native apps but we’re talking about simple devices, we don’t need the power of WorldOfWarcraft to turn on a light bulb. HTML5 is more than enough for the vast majority of needs. I’m not against native apps, I just pro instant-interaction. Anything that allows that is a good step forward.

2:12 PM3G

T-Mobile Clear

Nearby

Palais Royal

68

Musée du Louvre

Notifications

New SMS from David

Crêpes Justine

T-Mobile Clear

Nearby

Toyota Prius

Maria Jenson

Bang & Olufson

Notifications

New SMS from David

2:12 PM3G

Here is a quick example but it applies just as much to Google Glass as to Smart phones, or even smart TVs... But if it were to find something smart nearby, it just lists it in the notification bar. When I click on it, it just shows a browser ‘chrome’ (with no browser overhead) This is fast, quick and involves no app download. Yes, the mobile web isn’t as functional as native apps but we’re talking about simple devices, we don’t need the power of WorldOfWarcraft to turn on a light bulb. HTML5 is more than enough for the vast majority of needs. I’m not against native apps, I just pro instant-interaction. Anything that allows that is a good step forward.

2:12 PM3G 2:12 PM3G

JIT ecosystem

But this is a bit naive, I’ll admit but what I’m ultimate asking for is a just in time ecosystem where many smart displays are looking for many more smart objects.

Silos are counter productive

All your data

Google your room

....and so very old school

The overall message here is that the old school model of monolithic ecosystems is crumbling. The internet of things is just like the internet: by it’s very definition it covers everything, there is no way a single company can encompass that. At the same time, we are an economy that loves the big players and we look to them to lead the way.

What is more likely to happen is that kickstarter/indigogo will create a range of crazy and a bit weird products that, like the early web, will NOT be as good as the siloed systems. However, as they crowdsource and grow, they will surprise and grow from the ground up, again, must like the original web did. Someone is going to solve these two problems in a way that is good enough to kick start this movement.

In thinking about the future, it’s easy to be blinded the the giants of the day. The iPhone is great, it was a major step forward but it is not the model we need for the internet of things. It still has a place, we just need to grow past it to a more flexibly and open model.

In thinking about the future, it’s easy to be blinded the the giants of the day. The iPhone is great, it was a major step forward but it is not the model we need for the internet of things. It still has a place, we just need to grow past it to a more flexibly and open model.

Power to the people

scott@jenson.org

@scottjenson

jenson.org