At Labs. Redweb, We’re 4 weeks in to six months of looking at the Internet of Things

This presentation is loosely a brain dump of the research & exploration we’ve done so far !spoiler alert: currently we have more problems and questions, and very few answers!

The Internet of things has been made possible by three advancements !(low cost) Sensors + (ubiquitous) connectivity + (digital) processes

But it’s a term better described as !Things of the internet, or Things WITH the internet

But we should bring this back to people It’s not just about the Things !It’s about how this relates to us & the value people can harness

In 2008, the number of connected Things overtook the number of humans on the planet !That was the year of Google Chrome, iPhone 3G, windows 7 & android phones!

We now have an enormous amount if data that our devices can access from anywhere anywhere & anytime

It’s estimated that in 18 years time, we’ll each have 5000 connected things in our daily lives - Wow!

But with great beard comes great responsibility…We don't want to drown in endless alerts, pings, buzzes, and red circles

Most of our interaction with devices will need to be invisible

It’s very easy to coo over the latest devices & gadgets, especially in our techy industry & environment. But we need to bring it back to PEOPLE

Over the next few months, we’ll be looking further into the following 5 areas

Smart watches, Glass, heart monitors, wrist bands, fitness trackers etc !It feels like the earliest of stages - innovations are incremental

Are any of those the answer to this question? Not yet, but we’re possibly getting closer (Glass especially)

Capturing our personal data: motion, activity, performance, heartbeat, weight, consumption…

Who owns a fitness tracker? Do you still use it?Do you still keep it charged?

Would repair or replace it if it broke?

Changing our behaviour through awareness. Short term vs long term value: Changing habits vs improving performance

But we will see more value when we move beyond gamification and sharing to monitoring and prediction !We could use these devices to - improve our health long term, connect our health services, Prevent & predict illness. And perhaps have smarter insurance, mechanisms

Things that deal in location specific information & services

A closer look at iBeacons: (Apple seem very keen to these)

This is an estimate beacon. It’s marketed heavily at retail spaces

Shops will be able to send you personal messages. !Sounds good, but it’s going to be misused & get spammy …and we’ll all turn our bluetooth off!

Sensors to connect our cities, make our offices “smarter”, make our home life easier !These are everyday environments, the spaces in which we live & work

Individual sensors vs bigger picture !How any house plants do people have at home? Would you pay £50 to monitor each of them?

(Terrible football based visual joke)

“in the future everything in a city, from the electricity grid, to the sewer pipes to roads, buildings and cars will be connected to the network. Buildings will turn off the lights for you, self-driving cars will find you that sought-after parking space, even the rubbish bins will be smart.”

Once again, we need to bring this back to people…

And how do we avoid this scenario?

The 5 steps to our evolving technosociety:

Definition of a spime:

our current thoughts - positives, negatives & niggling worries !FIRSTLY the things we like about IOT:

As we’ve been saying for a while, we think the future should be: Frictionless, invisible, memorable !And the IOT is suited to all 3

FRICTIONLESS by task & device: !You should be able to move from one device to another, seamlessly, for any task

Our interaction should be effortless, seamless and withut irritation

Making experiences that stand out, by making things that matter to people & enabling users to be part of the story

This is amazing: Our UV chip only cost £9.70, our Headset - £100

And now the not so good bitsShould we be concerned about privacy? Writing a text on your wrist for all to see? Taking photos without anyone seeing you do it?

If you can control your house with your phone, so could someone else. Cars are mostly CPU controlled some cars have been hacked & started remotely

Will this make our lives easier or more complex and more difficult or distracting? !We have to learn rules, instructions, interfaces, interactions, and remember account details, charge batteries, chargers etc

Too much information leads to information loss !How do we disconnected? How do we make filters smarter?

We don’t have time (or inclination) to do everything !We can’t do all this or we won’t have time to drink or enjoy the wine

Which side are you going to take? Which system do you buy into?How deep do you wade in?

And who owns your data?

And will the systems you buy into last? !What happens if they suddenly change their interfaces or APIs?

How can we interpret the data we produce to harvest real value?

Should we look to add personality or revert to the modernist truth to materials mantra? !(People treat their Roombas like pets, often paying more to repair them than it would take to buy a new one)

At the minute things look terrible - plastic, rubbery & bright. But the other end of the spectrum is no better for these new devices

So what are the next steps for Redweb Labs and the IOT projects we’ll be looking at?

We won’t be making the famous internet fridge. We want to explore further and ask more searching questions in our work.

We’ll be aiming for something that ticks or tickles the boxes we’ve been going on and on about

We’ll be making experiments to answer the questions & test the preconceptions that we’ve talked about here

And as always we’ll be seeking the holy trinity we always aim for at Redweb Labs

Several of our past projects can be labelled as IOT so this is nothing new to us

Our latest project - the Blaze UV app, is a good case in point

We bought a UV sensor…

Connected it to an arduino

Converted data to audio and communicated that to a phone through FSK !(Read Sean’s blog post on redweb.com)

We built our first hardware prototype, fitting all the electronics into a piggy back phone case

And gave some thought to what form a shrunken and finished product might take.

We gave some thought to how the phone app might work. The full story is documented at http://blazeuvkey.redweb.com

We’ve played with making a door opening wearable. Fitting the wiring form our door passes inside a watch carcass

We’re working on a cycling hoody. It senses when you lift & stretch your arm out, to then glows LEDs to indicate you’re planning to turn.

We’re experimenting with iBeacons & a greeting display. Are these reliable? Do they react fast enough? Where’s the limit between interest & irritation?

And we’re halfway through an installation project that will see Elvis on a skateboard, being ALL SHOOCK UP

I recently attended a client’s charity golf day. As well as looking splendid, i fully networked myself up…

It wasn’t a very good experience

And some of you guys have been helping test these bluetooth stickers. !James - tracked JohnBen - tracked notebook Sean - track passes Tom - tracked his catHow have you found them?

And thanks to those who have 3D doodled: Prizes for 3d printing !Amy - ship in a bottle Michaela - bournemouth eye James - zebra donkey Gemma - ISS