SXSW2013-Jenson

Bears, Bats, and BeesThe Internet of things needs our help

10 March 2013

@scottjenson

jenson.org

Sunday, March 10, 13

Parlaylabs


I’ve been lucky to to be a UX designer at some very innovative companies. I’m currently Head of UX for Parlay labs, a startup in Palo Alto.

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People are surprisingly conservative when it comes to innovation. Everyone wants innovation but are deathly afraid of risk...

When we reflect on how far we’ve come, most people just focus on speed size and cost, assuming that is the core force moving forward. But these are *safe* predictions, of course things will get smaller/faster/cheaper. That is incremental innovation. We almost always fall into the same trap of just extending the current paradigm, just making it a little cheaper, a little smaller, and a little faster..


What’s happening next? Easy, it’s the iWatch! The reason people are so excited about the iWatch is that it makes so much sense (from a certain naive perspective) Soon to be followed by the iRing and the iTieTack. These are find products but they are just a fairl conservative extension of our existing paradigm.

Default ThinkingSunday, March 10, 13

I’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 a new technology buy the tasks done by the old. 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 dont know what we don’t know.

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

Marshall McLuhan



So while we’re all breathlessly waiting for the iWatch, what has actually been happening?


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 with 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, Yale


Cheap computing can go into anything the problem is our extreme lack of imagination as to what this could be.

Discover

Control

Coordinate


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 teach that “I don’t want apps on my toaster” I want to shake them by their shoulders! “That’s *your* old paradigm, not mine. Smart devices are not about apps! Thy are about 3 basic layers of functionality.

Bees

Bats

Bears ....Big Screen + General OS

.... focused function device

....only data


As a designer, I feel strongly there is power it 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.

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. Apps 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?

http://jenson.org/mobile-apps-must-die/

Model Crisis

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.

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 ForgetSoftware 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

2: IoT is just the web.... for hardware

1: Break out of “App Myopia”

So what do I want?


So what do I want? I’d just like to push a few memes down the hill... If we don’t know *what* we want we’ll never invent it. Native Apps are a hold over of the 1960s, tying you into the ecosystems of Bears. They are fine for that world but in a world of exploding serendipitous interactivity, they are just getting in the way.

Smart devices are JUST LIKE the web. They need to be found by every device in a free an open way. Everything else, from security to monetization can be added on top.

http://jenson.org/app-myopia/http://jenson.org/was-the-internet-just-an-accident/`

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

3: Simple way to interact

So what do I want?

2: IoT is just the web.... for hardware

1: Break out of “App Myopia”


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....

2:12 PM3G

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Here is a quick example but it applies just as much to Google Glass as to Smart phones, or even smart TVs...

2:12 PM3G 2:12 PM3G

JIT ecosystem



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

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@scottjenson

jenson.org


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SXSW2013-Jenson