What the smart home can learn from Detroit

In 1916, Cadillac released the Type 53. While only in production for a year, it may just be the most influential car of all time.

This was the first car that worked like we expect a car to work. The Model T is more famous, but you wouldn’t know how to start it. In the Type 53, the user experience is, essentially, the same as a brand new Mercedes. Except, of course, that a new Mercedes has more lines of code than Windows Vista.

So what does all that code do to a 100-year old user experience? They remove the boring parts, the difficult parts, the dangerous parts. They keep the core experience, and make it smoother, more efficient, and just plain better.

It will take self-driving cars to change the way we’ve driven for the last 100 years. That’s a change you can call disruptive and paradigm-shifting without being mocked.

With that in mind, why does the smart home industry keep wanting to change everything? There’s nothing disruptive about turning the lights on from an app.

A some point, the smart home will reach its self-driving moment, but to get there, we need to start putting lines of code into a 100 year old user experience. Instead of trying to change the way people use their homes, we need to remove the boring parts, the difficult parts and the dangerous parts, while letting the user experience stay essentially the same.

“BEST MILEAGE IN ITS CLASS”

Of the boring parts, nothing is more boring than energy efficiency, yet this has become the break-out success of smart home products. Nest has proven that simplifying air conditioning is worth a $250 investment, garnering both rave review and adoring fans. Riding on the coat tails of Nest, we see light fixtures, shades, and fans all start to make your home more energy efficient.

With the smart grid in place, these intelligently efficient homes can start to work in unison to optimize energy consumption across the electrical grid, adaptively balancing loads by utilizing user behaviour insights, reducing both the immediate danger of blackouts and future infrastructure investments. Just a few hundred dollars invested in the home can have major macro-economic consequences.

“WASHER FLUID LOW”

For many, the idea of an internet-connected appliance is a fridge with a screen. That might have the occasional use, but the true value of connected appliances may not be in controlling them. Instead, the value might lie in automatic monitoring and diagnostics.

With 1 out of 20 home fires in the US caused by malfunctioning washers and dryers, there are massive benefits from appliances that can notify owners when there is an issue or maintenance is needed. This can potentially save lives and millions in damages, not to mention significantly improving the life of an appliance.

Beyond notifying owners, future appliances could automatically book necessary appointments for repair. As part of a total smart home with video cameras, sensors and remote controlled locks, the owner won’t even have to be home for the appointment.

«SIX AIRBAGS»

Imagine a world where you had to turn on your airbags every time you got in your car or where you had to decide what type of safety cage the car came with. That’s where home security is at the moment.

It might be an established market across the world, but with 30 – 50 % of home security systems not turned on regularly and batteries routinely removed from smoke detectors, it can be significantly improved through smart home technology.

The key to improving home security and safety will be to let the systems take care of themselves. Alarms should arm and disarm automatically, flood sensors should come as standard, and your fire alarms should turn your lights off without requiring you to have a computer science degree.

Like the car industry, those of us working to bring intelligence to homes will have to take a holistic approach to designing our products, making sure they work together and create value together without burdening the user with complications. We need to remember that it’s about removing the boring parts, the difficult parts and the dangerous parts, not about moving the buttons from a wall to an app.