IoT: the voice of a building. Sharing the secrets that shape human experience

In the early 1980s as I was growing up, there was a sci-fi cartoon set in the 31st century that I loved; it was called ‘Ulysses 31’. As Ulysses and his crew raced around the universe undertaking daring quests, one of the most mesmerising central characters was the spaceship, - “Shirka” - which was nothing other than an early form of AI. Even though Shirka was a machine, an entity that housed the other characters, it was never addressed as such; it was another member of the team, a friend. It protected them, solved problems, and anticipated their needs. It didn’t hesitate to sacrifice itself, always addressing its human inhabitants with “her” warm, trustworthy and soothing voice.

I believe that Shirka was a forerunner to the concept we are only just exploring decades later and that is how to turn our buildings, our offices – those protective exteriors – into living entities.?And if you wonder why would we want to do this, the answer is: in order to create amazing experiences.

The friend you never knew you had

Buildings are no longer just about sustainability, efficiency, or in a post-pandemic world just about safe return to work. Buildings are more and more about creating a comfortable, pleasurable and memorable experience where human connection, social interaction, collaboration and creation can be enjoyed.

This is essential for many reasons, but the three key ones are:

1.??????To increase productivity – without doubt the holy grail for employers

2.??????To stimulate innovation by designing smart, flexible spaces, human-centric spaces that spark the flame of creativity (let’s be honest; innovation rarely happens from the couch of your living room)

3.??????The third – and perhaps the most important and relevant nowadays – is to attract and retain talent; increasingly important as companies globally experience a 40% staff turnover (they call it “the Big Quit”)

It’s interesting how we deploy all means available in order to advance as a species (mainly that of technology), yet we’re missing out on something very obvious: the fact that buildings can help us realise our potential. We spend 90% of our time within them; they’ve been watching us and interacting with us for years. They “see” how we behave, how we operate, where we like to spend time (they “know” if we’ve been bad or good!). In a sense, when it comes to creating a great experience, buildings are the friends we never knew we had. They have insights, we’ve just never asked for them. This is where technology and buildings become the perfect partnership. Technology becomes the ‘voice’ of the building.

Through technology and the data it harnesses, we’re liberating buildings, allowing them to achieve their full potential – we’re making them part of our crew, our teams, our families; we’re bringing them into our community and giving them a central role. And by them achieving their potential, we achieve ours.

We’re achieving humanisation through futurization.

when it comes to creating a great experience, buildings are the friends we never knew we had

Unlocking IoT to shape our experience

Until now we’ve been using IoT to make buildings more efficient, more sustainable, but there’s an evolution underway to leverage the power of IoT to understand more about human beings: how are people feeling, why are they behaving in a certain way, what’s driving them, what’s missing for them?

At our offices in California we noticed that data from heat maps gathered over lunchtime showed increased activity in a particular boardroom and not the cafeteria as expected. After investigation, it became clear that people preferred this room because of the view and the ambiance. It served as a place for the perfect break, where people could switch off, socialise and connect. This type of data can allow companies to repurpose their spaces and create a better experience for its employees.

Of course more technology means an ever increasing amount of data available to us that must be analysed, interpreted and utilised. From 2010 to 2020, the amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world increased from 1.2 trillion gigabytes to 59 trillion gigabytes, an almost 5,000% growth[1]. It’s usually presented to us as a dashboard, but my question is: who has time to be looking at dashboards and how many dashboards will it take to make sense of 59 (and ever increasing) trillion gigabytes? We have the intelligence around us to change this. The technology is smart! We can leverage the ubiquitous sensor technology, that not only “senses”, but also thinks and acts on our behalf so we have more time to focus on the things that matter. We don’t need to be dealing with endless time-consuming, stressful and low value add activities.

What we should do is actually make real what was presented to us decades ago, through fiction books, movies or even cartoons, such as Ulysses 31. To exploit those futuristic ideas from science-fiction where the buildings in which we live and work become living entities; they protect, assist, and make our lives easier so that the experience of being within them is transformed.

But there’s no escaping that it does come at a cost…

Futurization

When we look at that alarming rate of staff turnover in the post-pandemic world, we cannot afford to debate forever the concept of ROI (Return on Investment) versus ROI as Risk of Inaction. We can discuss ad nauseam about how to get precise data to measure the exact productivity of human beings, but we’re never going to get that one figure. While we keep debating this one KPI that would accurately summarise human productivity, time is marching on and if we don’t act now and invest in technology and buildings we will lose this time and opportunity. In this case, more could be lost by indecision rather than bad decision.

Business leaders who do not invest in the right technology (that which has human beings at its heart and identifies problems and opportunities before they even arise), in data and in creating amazing experiences, will suffer from their short-term view of investment. It’s clear that we have to adapt our organisations, finally leverage our buildings and see them as more than steel and glass or bricks and mortar. We have to futurize and humanise.

We need the 31st century spaceship, not the 20th century office block!

A final word on technology (spoiler alert: future proofing!)

If I look at the functionality of my old Nokia phone from 2003 (I still have it and it’s functioning ??), I could make phone calls and send text messages on it and on a good day I could play “snake” (remember it?). That’s fine, however, take my smartphone on the other hand - which cost significantly more - it can also send text messages and make phone calls as well as enable me to book tickets, organise travel; sell, buy, read, shop, communicate, play music, watch films, control my home’s heating and do my banking, amongst hundreds of other applications to make my life easier.

Did I ever imagine I would be able to do all these things through my smartphone? No! Can I envisage the applications I will download six months down the line or two years from now? No! Do I lose sleep over this? No, because I know that with my smartphone I am “future proofed”. I have the right platform to adopt new solutions to problems I never imagined I would have. If I had been forced to stick with my Nokia mobile phone, I would still be only making calls, sending texts and occasionally playing “snake”.

Nobody doubts there is a cost to future-proofing; this is always the first (and unfortunately) the main concern, but here’s a question: if you had the option of selecting a mobile phone or a smartphone, knowing that you’d have to stick with it for the next 20 years would you go for calls and texts, or a device that has the power to promote community, collaboration and productivity? A device that becomes more than just help, but instead becomes something bigger, more powerful, closer to you. A "device" that is more of an "entity" actually... or even better... a friend?

Buildings are the friends we never knew we had!

[1] Forbes Magazine (54 predictions about the state of data in 2021)