It’s often (a lot) harder than it locks.

Sometime in 2012 my family and I started discussing buying a smartlock for our house. Friends running Airbnb rentals were successfully using them to grant remote, keyless entry to their guests. We concluded that such a solution would greatly simplify various circumstances we found ourselves in with family, friends and contractors.

Back in 2012 the smartlock options on the market were extremely pricey, technically unsophisticated and not particularly compatible with the locks on our exterior doors. Around the same time a variety of new options started appearing on the horizon which seemed to be a better fit for our objectives. These new solutions promised to ship with smartphone apps, had come down to the $200 price range, and most importantly appeared to be easier for me to self-install with our existing doors and locks.

The Waiting Begins

On 1/10/13 I ordered a Lockitron. I did not realize I would be installing my first smartlock 23 months in the future or that it would be made by a different manufacturer.

When I placed my Lockitron order I didn’t think through all the challenges that would go into developing a smartlock. There were already products on the market. I assumed most of the kinks had been worked out and what hadn’t would be in the not too distant future. I’ve worked on multiple hardware products but apparently I forgot how hard it is to ship. For some reason I was under the mistaken impression that this was a relatively straightforward project. The website I ordered from seemed unusually polished and I just sorta assumed it was much further along. Boy was I wrong! It appears the Lockitron team might have underestimated the challenges ahead too.

Ten months later, on 10/3/13, having grown tired of waiting for the Lockitron to arrive I went ahead and ordered two August locks. Originally, I figured I’d just install whichever arrived first and sell the other. As the months went by reviews of both locks started to appear online. I started to realize that I wanted the August over the Lockitron. I couldn’t find a way to actually cancel my Lockitron on their website without contacting customer service. Ironically, during the duration of time I waited for the Lockitron to ship the credit card I used to order it had been cancelled and that card had yet to be charged. Problem solved.

My August locks arrived on 11/12/14. I’ve unboxed a lot of products and this felt special and memorable. The packaging was attractive, playful and reinforced my earliest assumptions that this was going to be an amazing product. I recall feeling proud of my purchasing decision and glad that I had waited for this specific smartlock. The lock itself was a bit large and awkward. However, compared to pictures I had seen of the Lockitron it felt compact. I can appreciate the industrial design but I probably wouldn’t call it a gorgeous object. It’s something I am tolerant of on my door. For comparisons sake the Nest thermostat is something I am proud to have featured on my wall.

Time to Install

When I got home that night I quickly installed one of the locks on my front door. The install went fast. The instructions were easy to follow. I was walked through everything perfectly. I was particularly impressed by the calibration procedure, it seemed really smart and thought out. By unlocking and locking the door you essentially train the lock how far it needs to turn. Cool!

The August iOS application could use some additional work. The app uses bluetooth to connect to the lock and it is painfully slow. I could easily reach for my keys and unlock my lock in the time it takes for the August iOS software just to find a lock in my immediate vicinity. The interaction flow is also a bit heavy. Today, to manually unlock my door, it can take 4-clicks. That’s annoying when you’re standing outside of your front door.

My initial thoughts were who cares about the app because this was a smartlock. I would walk up to the door and it would instantly unlock. When I closed the door it would auto-lock behind me. I was going to be living in the future and it was going to be awesome. The app didn’t need to be amazing because the magic was going to happen with the app running in the background.

The Pain Begins

My challenges using August locks started becoming apparent the next day. I installed the second lock on my side door in the morning before heading into work. It’s a door to a breezeway which leads to our backyard. This also happens to be a paneled door. I suspect the wood was slightly warped and that made it challenging to replace my existing deadbolt with such an oversized lock. While the lock on my front door went on in less than 10 minutes my side door install took 45 minutes. Eventually, I got it on using brute force.

The only way my side door stays closed is if the lock is engaged. There is no other latch. The door handle is literally just a handle on the outside and it is not attached to an additional locking mechanism which would help secure that the door is closed. What this means is that for the door to remain closed the lock has to be engaged otherwise it will swing open.

Two of the software features I was excited to use with the August lock were Everlock and Auto-Unlock. Everlock automatically relocks your door shortly after you unlock it. Auto-Unlock uses your phone’s location feature to automatically unlock your door when you arrive home. Both are features you have the option to enable. I enabled both.

With the lock installed on my side door I got into my car and went off to work. I remember feeling a little un-easy about having new locks on my house but figured that the worst case was my door might unlock and who would know to try my door that day? Also, I have an alarm.

Starting to Feel Insecure

I arrived home that evening and drove into my garage like usual. It’s worth noting that my garage door is between my front door and my side door. Apparently, when I pulled in that evening my phone had the August iOS app running in the background. As I drove past the door into my garage the phone connected to my side door and Auto-Unlocked it. Due to the unique nature of my side door it immediately swung open. I did not notice this had occurred until the next day when I pulled out to go to work.

When I drove out the next morning I was extremely puzzled to see an open side door. I was also a little scared. It took me a few minutes to piece everything together. One of the nicer features of the August app is that it keeps a log of the locks activity. I accessed the log for my side door and noticed a timestamp from the prior day indicating that I had unlocked the door precisely when I arrived home. What happened started to make sense. I immediately disabled the Auto-Unlock feature on both of my August locks.

A few days later I went to take the garbage out and left my front door open for a little bit. During that time the Everlock feature engaged. When I walked back into the house I fortunately noticed that the bolt on the door was sticking out of the side of the door. It dawned on me that even if my wife and I got used to the Everlock feature we would be unable to educate everyone about how it works and there would be a high likelihood that someone might unintentionally slam the door closed with the bolt sticking out. I immediately disabled the Everlock feature on both of my August locks.

App UI = kinda rough

A few weeks later we had our first visitor to the house who we wanted to share a virtual key with. Unfortunately, it was non-obvious to me how to invite someone without being connected to the lock. Since nobody was at home I had to go home to let them in and invite them to access the lock. Since this was one of the primary use cases that caused us to buy the lock in the first place it was a bit disappointing to stumble upon once it was installed. The catch is that this was user error on my part. I thought you had to be connected to the app to invite people. I originally published that this was the case. However, August reached out and corrected me. Apparently, this feature was just very hard for me to discover.

The August Connect is a $49.99 upgrade which will connect to both your home wireless network, via wifi, and your lock, via bluetooth, and should enable remote access. It will also (hopefully) speed up connecting to the lock since my phone is probably optimized to seek out and connect to a wifi connection much faster than a bluetooth one. I can understand the rationale behind not bundling an August Connect with a lock. But, it was definitely unclear to me that part of the functionality I assumed I was buying required an an additional purchase and that it would be coming in the future. That said, the August Connect hadn’t been announced when I purchased it and so I simply chalk this up to me being an early adopter.

Didn’t Think About That

The next issue I started facing was something that probably should have been more obvious from the beginning. It’s also something I have admittedly made harder on myself. Our front door has two locks: the deadbolt and the lock in the door handle. The deadbolt has been upgraded with the August smartlock. But, in order to benefit from using a smartlock you either have to disable the lock on the door handle or upgrade it too. Currently, we have just upgraded the deadbolt. Neither Lockitron or August manufacture a smart door handle. It’s probably obvious but what this means is that if the door handle is locked unlocking the smartlock will still require a key to unlock the door handle. Sure, you could just leave the door handle unlocked but all it takes is forgetting once to lock the deadbolt and you’ve left your front door insecure. Having grown accustomed all my life to using both locks anywhere I’ve lived it’s proving hard to adapt to disabling one. Since I have also disabled the Everlock feature I also don’t have that to rely upon as a backup. Perhaps I’ll get more comfortable with the August smartlock and start leaving the door handle unlocked. But, I doubt it.

Battery Issues

I’ve been living with my installed August locks for nearly 2 months now. The batteries that shipped with them have both died from what I would classify as light use. My family often enters our house via the garage which means we don’t even use the doors with the August locks on them. The idea of leaving my home without a key is probably something I could get away with most of the time but eventually it would catchup with me if these locks have such a short battery life. As far as I can tell I seem to only get notified that the locks are low on battery if I connect to them.

Where I’m At

I can’t say my first experiences living with a smartlock are super positive. I’ve disabled the auto-unlock and auto-lock features that I thought would be useful. While it was definitely my own fault for not doing more research I was surprised to learn that out of the box I had no way to remotely access the locks to check on their status or to invite people to gain access. I also did not know I would need to pay more for remote functionality features. I struggled with installation issues and I had a disturbing security issue. My locks have run out of batteries in their first two months of use. Unlocking the door with the app is at best a 20-second exercise and it’s much faster to use a key. The core value props are useless if you continue to lock the door handle. I still continue to use my physical key. I often think I should remove the locks.

Some Learnings

It’s easy to take product innovation for granted. While the internet of things will be a step forward it is definitely a work in progress which often delivers products that aren’t ready for primetime just yet. There are a lot of unique scenarios to solve and ingrained behaviors of the past to adapt to.

I was reminded of and/or learned a few things: Great products take time to develop and evolve. Simple problems are often (a lot) harder to solve than they look. If you adopt things early you will pay the price in more ways than one. Smartlocks should be installed during the day when you are around to deal with anything that could go wrong. Unique design challenges, i.e. edge cases, are often very hard to spot and can take time to emerge. New features that have security implications should be enabled with caution. Some problems aren’t big enough to pay to adopt the early solutions. If you do adopt something early try one first instead of two.

My Problems + Some Proposed Solutions

It probably sounds crazy to get this far and read me saying this but the August smartlock is actually pretty good, it’s just not a great product yet. And, it is definitely not working for me. Below I’ll do my best to identify some of the problems I faced with some suggested solutions I think I would have benefited from. Whether they’re useful or not they serve to indicate how hard a problem a smartlock manufacturer like August is facing.

Problem: I managed to think that the lock shipped with features and functionality that it did not. Suggested solution: Continue to refine the marketing to clarify the feature set. A chart might be nice. Clarify when a premium add-on is required.

Problem: I was surprised to discover that certain things had happened. Suggested solution: Initiate modal feedback, such as a push notification or alert view, the first few times Auto-Unlock and Everlock were triggered. Make it easy to turn these off. They are about training a user not annoying them.

Problem: One of my doors was hard to install the lock on. Suggested solution: It might be nice to showcase what kind of doors this works very well on and what kind of doors it does not.

Problem: The app doesn’t use standard visual conventions which makes it a bit harder to learn and use. Suggested solution: Revisit the interactions and visual design so that the appmatches the simplicity and straightforwardness of the industrial design of the lock itself. I would have preferred a utilitarian app design over something super custom.

Problem: It’s way too many clicks to manually control a lock. Make this something I can do on the first screen without going anywhere else. Suggested solution: Consider laying out the app around the common consumer use case which is likely to be someone with access to a lock(s) at a single residence. Based on lock proximity start auto-connecting to the nearest one upon launch.

Problem: Everlock is time based not state based. The bolt should only ever auto-lock once the door is closed. I can’t be expected to train people how to use my lock. Proposed solution: Maybe try adding an accelerometer to the lock, calibrate and track when it is open and when it is closed. Alternatively, add a simple circuit that closes with the door strike plate.

In Conclusion

Designing great products is hard work. A smartlock is trying to replace analog solutions which have evolved over centuries. Designing a single device that will work with a large matrix of scenarios is an even more challenging solution.

The teams at August and Lockitron are extremely talented people who I greatly admire. They are on to something big and their first products are truly impressive. Their work is simply going to take time. In the process they have already started to make it much easier for some of us to share our spaces with others.

It’s harder than it locks.