It’s The Design Stupid – Or Why I Think Autonomous Car Driving Adoption Will Depend on Innovative Design

It appears to me that when it comes to the consumer side of this new IoT phenomenon, style, usbility and design of the devices is critical. If the given device is both attractive and intuitive, it will also sell for a premium. Some of the examples that come to mind is the Nest thermostat and of course Google Glass!

I think it all started when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod. That design and usability were so completely new, simple, easy to use that it blew our minds. We now want this from all our devices.

In my opinion, autonomous cars will need to follow that trend to gain acceptance. They will need to have such compelling design, style and usability that will make driving secondary, and we will prefer to be inside the car to do things other than driving. I think that Mercedes might have come up with just that sort of vehicle design which was unveiled at the recent CES:

 

The challenge will be to add to the beauty of the style reliability of the technologies that will enable the vehicle’s autonomy to make us completely comfortable to enjoy the ride!

Daniel Obodovski explains IoT

My good friend Daniel Obodovski wrote a very good book, The Silent Intelligence, that provides an excellent overview of the internet of things phenomenon. He and his partner, Daniel Kellmereit, discuss topics such as connected cities, connected homes, connected healthcare, connected cars, and various other connected things, both industrial and commercial.

There are some key points that Daniel and I have discussed often which are well summarized in this video interview he did last year. The day Google acquired Nest (yes, the smart thermostat company!) for over $3 Billion Dollars, made everyone start pay attention to IoT, even though Daniel and I have been involved in this high tech area for over 5 years now!

 

 

Perfect stocking stuffers, perhaps for next year, courtesy Kickstarter!

I have followed a couple of start-ups that got their beginning on Kickstarter, even gave one some of my own cash!

The first one is Ninja Blocks, , which peaked my m2m interest with their open source m2m blocks that you can program to do things like turn your lights on/off, run your thermostat, let you know when the door opens, etc. I’m not a developer, just an enthusiast/evangelist, but it looks simple enough even for me, so I’m seriously thinking of getting one of their kits to tinker with… will report on my progress, because if I can do it, then anyone can do it!

Second is Bia Sport, a very innovative GPS Sports Watch designed mainly for women, by women (Cheryl Kellond is the founder and CEO)!! Girls so rock in this case!! Not only is it beautifully designed, but it’s finally a device that works in the water as well as on land, so for a Triathlete like me, it’s an ideal sports device! And again, it’s sooo cool looking! Can’t wait for mine to be ready later in 2013!

Machine to Machine, or “The Internet of Things”, we have a name, now what?

I’m now involved in a new project in the M2M arena, or the Internet of things, the newly coined name by Cisco’s Chief Futurist Dave Evans. I constantly come across the projections of 50 billion connected devices by 2020 in everything from all your appliances being accessed through a facebook-like application where you can get your refrigerator to order your groceries while you’re driving home and your roomba having vacuumed your floor at the same time, to smart meters ensuring energy efficiency, and health monitors allowing your mother to age with dignity in her own home just to name a few.

But I am also finding that there are still many hurdles that need to be overcome to make this future a reality. For now, I can’t even really figure out how to get my mom to be able to use one of the new tablets seamlessly. She doesn’t have Wifi at home, and I don’t really want to spend additional $50/month on a 3G or LTE data plan! My last Verizon bill was already $500 because I went to Europe with my Global Droid and had to pay $2.95 per minute of voice time and $.50 per text! Whatever happened to that  free Wifi everywhere idea that I remember hearing about several years ago?

But I digress. The real problem is how to make all the disparate devices communicate and transmit data in standardized fashion and how to make real sense of the data into information that will help enterprises with their processes and show them that there is real ROI in implementing these costly integrations of sensors, gateways, networks and finally software applications. Oh and yes, having a billing system for it all that somehow makes sense would probably  help too!