Everyone talks about the future of work, but what about the future of home?

Lately, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether the pandemic has accelerated the remote work revolution. To me that discussion is missing the point. It’s not just about the future of work. It’s about the future of home.

There’s certainly a large category of knowledge workers and their employers who discovered that work can actually be productive from home with video conferencing and other collaboration software. Multiple tech companies announced remote work as their permanent arrangement going forward and some city dwellers have started considering cheaper locations as their home base.

But remote work is just one of the many activities that were drastically forced into the home this year and will now evolve in the home over the next few years. People may not like the idea of change, particularly not when it’s accelerated by a global health crisis. But a changing home isn’t something new. In fact, the purpose of the home has evolved over a long time, from historically housing large families and their businesses to the pre-2020 homes of small families or roommate arrangements intended to support a life focused on activities outside the home. Here are some areas where I expect to see more innovation in the home based on recent events:

🍝 Food: While most people used to eat some of their meals at home, COVID-19 definitely brought more of a restaurant function to the home. Folks bought fancy equipment and practiced their cooking and baking skills to satisfy their cravings. The need to eat every lunch at home highlighted the value of basic appliances like a large fridge and dishwasher as incredible time savers. Food delivery services like Amazon Prime and Instacart couldn’t keep up with demand, leaving space for other players. Last week alone, Uber both launched a new grocery delivery service and acquired Postmates for $2.65B. But they are not just filling a short term pandemic need. The skills and habits that people are building up around eating at home will outlast the pandemic and fuel a very different food economy.

🚴‍♀️ Exercise: Over the past few months, many homes transformed into gyms featuring online yoga, spinning classes, or various non-internet connected workouts. At-home exercise is quickly becoming a promising market for connected hardware with Lululemon buying Mirror for $500M, a steep exit for an early stage hardware company. As an early Peloton user, I’ve long felt that at-home exercise is far superior to the gym. Not having to travel to the gym or follow rigid schedules, at-home exercise means busy people can exercise much more often. Since you only need 15–20 minutes to release those powerful endorphins, it’s easy to see why people love (at a chemical level!) the products that bring great exercise to their home.

💇🏻‍♂️ Beauty: Over the past few months, there was a clear divide between people who were able to turn their beard trimmers or scissor-equipped spouses into home hair salons and those who could not. Hair clippers got a big boost on Amazon, as I’m sure did hair dye, nail polish, and anything else you may need for looking your sharpest in a video call. While images of folks getting manicures through their mail slots circled the internet, it could have been the perfect storm for all the nail polishing robots I saw at CES 2019. My guess is that they’re not yet affordable enough. Many people miss looking their best, but no one really missed making appointments or traveling to their hair stylist. So whether it’s with on-demand services or products, there’s clearly an opportunity to solve hair and nail styling directly in people’s homes.

🚀 The future: For many of us, the home will continue to serve these myriad functions. As tech companies like Uber are shifting their attention to the home, it’s also an excellent opportunity for any brand providing hardware or services to reinvent themselves and become more useful in the home.

Many of these new use cases will be attempted with connected products. But as we’ve seen from existing connected products on the market, most of them have a long way to go before they are user-friendly enough for mass adoption.

For us at Kraftful, these changes mean that our mission to make connected products usable by more people is becoming ever more important. As more and more products and services in the home become connected, we will continue providing digital interfaces for all those connected products. Today, it’s interfaces for smart home products most critical to domestic life, like thermostats, lighting, and locks. In the future, Kraftful-powered connected products will serve the many different functions that were rapidly brought to market this year and will continue to evolve in the home over the next decade.