IoT vision for the man on the street

Kevin Barrett, the CEO of Daybreak, wrote a good discussion post in the IoT community group on LinkedIn. He argued that way too many technology companies are talking way too much about standards, connectivity, privacy, etc. Whereas nobody is really explaining to the man on the street why they need IoT. He wants a real world vision for IoT. So let's not focus on technology for technology but on why in 2020 everybody wants to live in a world full of IoT.

Why should anybody care about IoT? The answer: THEY SHOULD NOT

If IoT is about control, managing, automating and connecting appliances in your home, business and city then most people will just not care. The real IoT vision should be about making IoT invisible to people. Do you care what algorithm Google uses to calculate the shortest route to the party you are going to? No you don't. In the same way people should not care about how the technology works to control their house, business or city. IoT should aim at taking the day-to-day technology burdens away from the majority of people.

Let's analyse some of the common technology burdens people have. Let's focus on 75+ because they are most technology shy. A typical 75+ will own a television that is having several TV channels that are not synchronised because frequency remapping happened. Their microwave has the time blinking 00:00. They will have multiple unread mobile messages from their grandchildren because they always forget how to open them, never mind responding. If they own a car they will likely not know how the radio channels are programmed and have been listening to the same station for the last 5 years. The washing machine has only 2 interesting programmes and way to many other buttons. Same for the dishwasher. Telephones are used for calling but remembering long numbers of digits is hard. Even if your children preprogrammed numbers, you still have to remember how to use them. It is either too hot or too cold because the thermostat is used as an on/off appliance. The alarm system never gets switched on because there were way too many false alarms.

How will IoT solve these problems without creating new nightmares? 

So let's start per appliance. The TV and IoT. Why can't TVs auto-discover where they are in the world, synch channels and suggest an order? Why do they need remote controls? Why do they need broadcasting when clearly on-demand is the future?  The IoT future for TVs will be about finding out who is in-front of them [cameras], understanding the engagement levels [watching or sleeping], understanding personal preferences [family friendly movies when popcorn and all members are present], alternative mechanisms of interaction [voice control, gesture control, auto-learning & feedback via the heartbeat monitor inside your smartwatch, etc.]. The TV experience should be as low touch as possible. Preferences should be portable hence even if you go to a hotel on the other side of the world, you want to have the same entertainment experience. My prediction is that people will want to trade privacy if the end result is usefulness and automation. The 75+ should be able to sit in front of any TV. Their face should be their password. The TV should learn from habits what content to surface. The on-boarding should be about asking simple questions like: "What would you like to see now: movies, series, documentaries, news, sports or other things?". Voice control should be able to guide them. The television should go louder when they hold their hand behind their ear. When they fall asleep the television should slowly go off or suggest they go to bed, depending on their preference and time of day.

The microwave and IoT? Time should be automatically set. Instant meals should be detected and heating instructions automatically downloaded. Setting the cooking time should not be necessary. Instead heat sensors should warm the products to ideal temperatures. Cameras should know who is standing in front of the microwave. The 75+ should just put a cup of water for tea inside the microwave and the microwave should have learnt from experience what the ideal temperature is. We are animals of habits. We like our drinks to be the same temperature. When summer comes we like our food a bit colder. When winter comes we like our food warmer. We should be able to have machines learn from our behaviour. The microwave should ask simple questions the first times like: "Do you want your drink to be lukewarm, hot or boiling?". We should tell the microwave when things are too hot or too cold and next time it should take that into consideration.

Communication is likely to change completely. Machines will be the gatekeepers to keep away spam. Levels of distress should be recognised by machines. If the 75+ would fall on the ground and a cry of pain would be heard by any smart device then automatically the house would go into emergency mode and find out if the 75+ is ok or not. Children would get high urgency notifications that are prioritized over any meeting or activity they are in at that moment. The house will remind the 75+ about upcoming events like birthdays and help suggest gifts and schedule calls.

Cars will be self-driven and entertainment will be a continuation from the sofa to the car bench. Completely personalised. Washing machines will have no buttons. Instead touch screens, cameras and microphones will help make washing a lot easier. Same for the dishes. Thermostats will not exist. Your house will be at the ideal temperature you prefer. Alarm systems will recognise if this is the 75+ or a burglar.

In short, the future of IoT is about making day-to-day technology burdens in your home, business or city go away. A small minority will be interacting and training new early-access devices and afterwards the big majority will receive appliances that come with useful habit recognition pre-programmed and will personalise from there onwards. IoT should be about making people's life easier.