Title: The Internet of Things Needs Design, Not Just Technology
Context: We’ve finally hit the point where we all agree that technology without design is bad, right? RIGHT?!?!
Synopsis: A fully networked world is coming. Your toaster will talk to your alarm clock which will be controlled by your calendar in the cloud which will be automated by your social media platforms which will be driven by your purchasing behaviors that will be informed by the camera in your refrigerator which will realize you are out of bread in order to inform your personal shopping agent to let you know to buy some more the next time you pass a store so you can make toast the next morning. Hard to imagine how we ever managed before the Internet of Things. But this will be about much more than just technology. Managing the flow and consumption of the exponential growth in information will not just be an engineering problem however. Sure machines will continue to speak machine language to each other but all of this dialogue will need to be translated and communicated to real, live people within a context that not only allows them to understand what is happening within their personal IoT infrastructure, but even more importantly, gives them suitable means with which to manage it. This won’t be a technology problem, it will be a human one. At least until people themselves achieve—or are forced into by our IoT overlords—obsolescence.
Best Bit: “Increasingly, the pull of user experience will drive market demand, and product design will be critical to getting consumers to adopt offerings in this new IoT 2.0 world.”
via hbr.org
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